How Jen Kent, Defense Laid the Foundation at Boston College

When you think of Dempsey Arsenault, you probably remember her offensive prowess.

Sure, she was a two-way midfielder who graduated among Boston College’s top 10 all time in ground balls (164) and draws (283), but she was a member of the “Big Three” along with Sam Apuzzo and Kenzie Kent, a trio best known for its offensive punch. And, yes, Arsenault also left Chestnut Hill in 2019 in the program’s top 10 for points (215) and goals (142).

Arsenault, Apuzzo and Kent helped Boston College reach the NCAA championship game for the first time in program history in 2017. The Eagles have been busy on the final Sunday of the season every year since, playing in seven straight NCAA finals.

People forget, but Arsenault started as a defender in her first year. Sydney Scales, who graduated in 2024 as a national champion, remembers. Arsenault was one of the players Scales idolized growing up 30 minutes away in Walpole, Mass.

“I would just watch Elizabeth Miller and Dempsey on defense, try to learn what they did and replicate it in my own game because they had so much success,” Scales said.

Scales was passionate as a defensive-minded midfielder and would start and stay on defense when she arrived on campus her freshman year.

Our collective and selective memory of Arsenault as part of a prolific, foundation-laying offensive unit is par for the course. Think of BC and your mind might immediately go toward any number of offensive talents, like the aforementioned trio or Charlotte North, Rachel Clark, etc. — to name just a few goal machines that have called themselves Eagles.

But opposing attackers likely best remember Miller, Arsenault (the defender), Scales, Courtney Taylor, Hunter Roman, Shea Baker and Lydia Colasante, all of whom were (or are) some of the game’s best on defense. And then there’s Shea Dolce, one of Division I’s most exciting goalies, whose last-minute save to preserve Boston College’s 2024 national championship instantly became a tell-your-grandkids moment.

“The defense has been a stabilizer for us for the last 10 years,” head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. “Without the defense, the offense can’t score. Defenses win championships, as the story goes.”

Do they, though? It’s an oft-repeated line, but it’s not a throwaway as far as BC is concerned. Last year’s win against Northwestern in the national final is one example, and not because of “The Save” by Dolce. After letting in six goals in the first quarter, the Eagles held the Wildcats’ lauded, Izzy Scane-led offense to seven goals the rest of the way. They won 14-13.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Walker-Weinstein said. “I wasn’t surprised at all. I see her go to work every day. I see her unit work every day. That’s just who they are.”

The “her” Walker-Weinstein referenced is her associate head coach, Jennifer Kent, whose tenure at Boston College predates her own. Kent joined the staff under Bowen Holden in 2008. Walker-Weinstein came on as an associate head coach in 2011. When Walker-Weinstein became the head coach in 2013, Kent stayed.

Like the defenders she’s molded — from Miller and Arsenault to Baker and Colasante — Kent can fly under the radar externally. Internally? It’s quite the opposite.

“You know, the common denominator between all these players is Jen,” Walker-Weinstein said.

Funny enough, not even Kent was a defensive-minded player. A Norwell, Mass., product, Kent was a scorer at Colby College. She’s one of 18 Colby players ever to reach 100 career goals. She also played basketball and soccer.

“As a player, I was always, ‘offense, offense, offense,’” Kent said.

Her mindset changed after she turned her tassel and began teaching and coaching girls’ lacrosse at Hyde School in Maine. It wasn’t a hotbed. The team needed a competitive advantage.

“Back in the day, no one talked about or coached defense,” Kent said. “I was like, ‘What do I need to win? Even though we don’t have the same talent, maybe we can stop people defensively and have a chance to win.’”

It worked. Hyde won the Maine state championship in 1995. A decade later, Kent led Walpole (Mass.) High School to state crowns in 2005 and 2006. At Boston College, Bowen tapped Kent to help the defense. And when Walker-Weinstein joined as an associate head coach, she was immediately impressed.

Two years later, when Walker-Weinstein took over, she asked Kent to take on a more autonomous role with the unit.

“It was an immense amount of respect from the very beginning, and I was excited to be able to work closely with her to give her the opportunity to be as great as I knew she was,”  Walker-Weinstein said. “I knew how smart she was and how good she was tactically. She was a three-sport athlete. She understands sports. She understands competition. She understands leadership, and she understands young women. She has six beautiful kids. She understands mothering.”

In fact, the last name is not a coincidence. Kenzie Kent — one of those “Big Three” — does call Jennifer Kent “Mom.”

Like a mom and the former teacher she is, Kent had to exercise patience and the importance of baby steps in the right direction.

“I'm a very simple person, so everything, to me, is about the basics,” Kent said. “While it’s a little better now, people were coming into college from high schools where there wasn’t a lot of defense being taught. ​​A lot of these women have never played defense before, so there’s no knowledge of sliding schemes or packages. Everything's changing. It takes a lot of time.”

The No. 1 rule?

“Know your job, do your job — and your job always changes,” Kent said. “One minute, you’re on ball. The next minute, you could be the first slide or the second slide.”

The Eagles recruited on potential, looking for players who were likely to follow the foundational rule and were fast, athletic and had a high IQ. Double bonus if you played basketball. (Scales is a 1,000-point club member at Walpole.)

“Jen has a deep understanding of basketball and how it relates directly to lacrosse,” Walker-Weinstein said. “We love girls who played high-level basketball. They understand the concepts a lot better.”

Since defense wasn’t prioritized at the high school level like BC valued it within their program, Kent and Walker-Weinstein went after midfielders they could make defenders. But not just any midfielder.

“We’re trying to find a middie who doesn’t just want to score goals but wants to play defense,” Kent said. “Can you stop someone 1-v-1 and transition the ball without turning it over? They need the IQ and the work ethic. It’s a grind. When you [find] that combination, it’s dangerous, though.”

One of those was Miller, who played both ends of the field for New Canaan (Conn.) High School and arrived at BC for the 2016 season.

“Elizabeth Miller was a machine,” Kent said. “That was the thing about her and our other best defenders through the years. They work hard all the time. They’re not afraid to go at it with some of our best attackers. Elizabeth Miller didn’t back down to anyone in her four years.”

Not even Arsenault.

“Elizabeth Miller was the ringleader,” Arsenault said. “She was such a good athlete, and I always hated going against her because she was so good. Every single practice was such a battle, and sometimes there would be tension between the offense and defense because you’re not playing with refs — what’s a foul? Every single battle was so hard, and the defense always gave it their all. It held us to a high standard.”

Miller didn’t make a ton of headlines, though her skills earned her IWLCA and ACC Defender of the Year status. It also started a legacy that raised the bar on the recruiting trail.  

“I saw the type of players they were breeding defensively, just pure athletes who just would do anything to win,” said Dolce, the No. 1 goalie in her class out of Darien (Conn.) High School. “From a goalie perspective, seeing Elizabeth Miller and Sydney Scales and the consistency in the defensive unit didn’t go unnoticed.”

As the goalie, Dolce — obviously — benefits from a solid defense, but the name-brand offensive stars did, too. Miller strengthened Apuzzo, Kent and Arsenault and vice versa. Ditto for Roman and Scales —who went on to be an ACC and IWLCA Defender of the Year like Miller before her — for North. It continues today.

“Shea Baker has to match up with Rachel Clark every day,” Walker Weinstein said. “How awesome is that for both of them? The back-and-forth battle is so good for their mentality, but you’re going to have to be resilient. Sometimes, you’re going to win those matchups, and sometimes you’re going to lose them. That’s the same mentality you have to have in a game. You have to be resilient when it’s not your day and not get too high when it is.”

Kent embodies a balanced approach, allowing her to develop defenders — something she still does even with BC’s elevated stature. And even still, players need to get used to the pace of the college game.

Coaches will mint defenders in practice. Kent pulled Roman and Scales aside within the first week of fall practices in 2022 and let them know they were moving to defense.

Roman didn’t mind. Like Scales, she said she was always more of a defensive-minded midfielder. But she also knew she had large shoes to fill, as the Eagles continued to move on from the group that lifted them to their first three championship game runs.

The personnel changed, but Kent’s expectations — or her signature blend of hard and soft — didn’t.

“Jen just does such a good job of taking you under her wing,” Roman said. “She is a very tough coach — all coaches are — but she had these high expectations. When a practice didn't go our way, she was one of those coaches who held you accountable after practice. But when I think of Jen Kent as a whole, as much as she was a coach, she was a mother. She always thinks there’s more you can give to her and the defense, but on tough days, she still brought the fun out of it.”

Scales recalled side conversations about how things were going off the field while the team got ready.

“I think it was those moments that allow her to form bonds with the people she coaches,” Scales said. “It seems small and might seem insignificant, but that was how I started my relationship with Jen and how it grew.”

The demeanor and principles that allowed Walker-Weinstein to put complete faith in Kent in 2013 and Scales in 2021 — the year Boston College won its first national title — might remain consistent, but Kent isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it coach. And she’s a talker.

“I'm a student of the game,” Kent said. “I love to learn, and I'm always talking to people. I look at Sam, Kayla [Treanor] and Kenzie at Harvard and talk to them about players who don’t like to get pressured and those who cave. I can learn something from everyone and anyone.”

That includes basketball teams. When she’s not on the field or in the film room — where Walker-Weinstein says she has scouting “down to a science” — you’ll often find her watching a Boston College basketball practice.

“Lacrosse is all basketball — the offenses, the two-man, the weave, the out-of-bounds plays and the picks — there are so many similarities,” Kent said. “I’m watching basketball practices all the time.”

When lacrosse took a cue from basketball and implemented a shot clock in 2017, Kent also shifted her playbook.

“There’s a different strategy in how you defend the last 12 to 15 seconds, and it’s very similar to basketball,” Kent said. “You have to get locked in and finish it off without fouling.”

But Kent and the Eagles have not taken another cue from basketball and shifted to zone defense like many other teams.

“They don't need to fix what’s working for them,” Arsenault said. “But zones were part of our preparation. We always had a zone defense and a faceguard, and our scouting reports were layered with different outlets we could use. We would go through reps so our coaches could make a switch if needed.”

Indeed, though Boston college ran and continues to run a 1-v-1 defense, the Eagles prepared the offense for zones, like the Stony Brook team they beat in the 2018 NCAA quarterfinals. They’ve beaten Syracuse, which employs a zone, eight straight times.

While the offense stole the attention in the most recent win over Syracuse — a 17-2 final to conclude the regular season — the defense doesn’t mind.

“Defense doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, and I don’t think it ever will unless you’re a super-flashy takeaway team,” Roman said. “But our culture shone through in smaller moments because our teammates rallied around those [then]. You can tell those little moments combined created all these great moments that led to seven national championship runs.”

So, Dolce’s national championship game save might have, to an extent, undercut the defensive turnaround. But once again, a compilation of smaller moments teed up the iconic one.

It was a 45-minute stretch that brought BC back to what made it great: Leaning into a culture built on trust that prioritizes doing your job. In this case, everyone was on the same page about what their No. 1 job was.

“In the huddles, it was about, ‘The person to your left and right has your back, and they have belief in you,” Scales said. “We called a huddle, locked eyes and switched who some people matched up with. Then, we just literally focused on getting one stop. It wasn’t about coming back or tying the game. It was just, ‘Next stop.’ Everyone bought into that.”

And everyone continues to buy in — to the defense, continuing a legacy of defensive All-Americans, making stops and a much-recited idea.

“We’re now trying to show these [younger players] that defense wins championships, and defense lays the groundwork for success,” Baker said. “It’s a huge momentum builder. That’s something I’ve learned during my time here. Leadership can come from the defensive end in huge games. That’s something we leverage at BC, and it’s something so powerful about our program.”