The Sunny Side: O’Leary’s Career Steeped In Success Beyond Winning

It’s common to hear athletes say they were overlooked in the recruiting process. Still, it never ceases to surprise people when Jen Adams says she received one (fated) offer from Maryland, or when Kylie Ohlmiller and Ally Kennedy report that Stony Brook was one of the few (or only) Division I schools to express interest.

You’re less likely to hear a coach make a similar claim about the start of their career patrolling the sidelines. Amanda O’Leary is not any coach.

“I put in a lot of graduate assistant applications after graduating from Temple,” O’Leary said. “At first, I didn’t get a lot of interest.”

O’Leary went out for a run one day. It was cut short by her father, who tracked her down in his car.

Sue Tyler, the legendary Maryland field hockey and lacrosse coach and USA Lacrosse Hall of Famer, had called.

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh’ and jumped in the car,” O’Leary said. “We drove home, and I called her back. She offered me a graduate assistant position in field hockey and lacrosse. She took a chance on me.”

Like Tyler’s eventual successor at Maryland, Cindy Timchal, O’Leary’s athletic career started as a child in the Philadelphia suburbs. Playing lacrosse (and basketball and field hockey) was just a given for young girls at that point. Her father’s job as a high school physical education teacher didn’t hurt when she developed a passion for different sports.

“Lacrosse wasn’t the prettiest sport,” O’Leary said. “Field hockey was probably the prettiest.”

It didn’t matter, though. O’Leary starred in both at Temple. Under Olympian Gwen Cheeseman, Alexander, O’Leary earned All-America status twice in field hockey. She was also a two-time NCAA Midfielder of the Year, a three-time All-American and the Lacrosse Magazine 1988 Player of the Year for Tina Sloan Green.

But the accolades don’t carry the same weight as the relationships. And playing for two programs, O’Leary developed plenty of those.

“It gave me an opportunity to have a bunch of different friends in both sports,” O’Leary said. “I feel sorry for kids nowadays that we’ve become so specialized. You can look at [Army’s] Brigid Duffy, but many kids don’t have the same opportunities afforded to me, like playing with different people, using different muscles. I wish we could go backward because that was an amazing opportunity.”

There was little going backward for O’Leary as a player. She helped Temple reach the NCAA finals in 1987, one-upping that feat with a 19-0 1988 season that ended with a national championship. It was the culmination of her playing career under Sloan Green, another USA Lacrosse Hall of Famer.

“It’s hard to describe the impact she had because it was so immense,” O’Leary said. “She was a player’s coach. She cared about winning, but she was more worried about how your family was, how your day was going, how you were doing academically — everything outside of lacrosse. When I think back on the lessons she taught us, it far exceeded anything that lacrosse taught. It was the life lessons about embracing people. Her passion ran deep for every one of us. She was our mom away from home.”

Flash forward about 35 years to O’Leary’s tenure at Florida, and Sloan Green’s impact endures.

“I loved getting to know Mandy and her family — she treated my family like family,” said Regy Thorpe, the current Syracuse head coach. Thorpe spent four seasons at Florida, going on final four runs in 2024 and 2025, and also coached USA Women’s Sixes National Team with O’Leary at The World Games in 2022.

O’Leary is no stranger to the USA Lacrosse ecosystem. She won a pair of World Cup titles with the women’s national team in 1989 and 1993. In 1993, O’Leary was the second-leading scorer with 17 points on the team that won gold in Scotland. Her biggest? The winner against Australia in the semifinals.

“As you get older, you forget the details of the game,” O’Leary said. “All you remember is winning the gold, putting the gold around your neck, the national anthem and the celebration after with your teammates, coaches and the support staff. The game-winner was just part of the game. Playing for Team USA is so much bigger than any person or team. To represent your country is the pinnacle of success.”

O’Leary was reaching other pinnacles, this time in coaching. After serving as a graduate assistant for Maryland in 1989, O’Leary joined the Delaware staff in 1990. She boomeranged back to College Park for the 1992 and 1993 seasons, winning a national title with Timchal in 1992 and advancing to the semifinals the following year.

Then O’Leary got her first head coaching job at Yale, a position she held for 14 seasons. But despite her pedigree and mentors, nothing hit quite like the weight of the first year on the job.

“I always feel like I need to apologize to the first team that I coached at Yale,” O’Leary said. “I made a ton of mistakes. There were things I wish I could do over, but you learn from mistakes. There were a lot of phone calls to people that I had worked for, with a lot of questions — ‘How did you handle that? How should I handle this?’”

Sloan Green remained a ring away.

“She was someone where you could pick up the phone at any time and be like, ‘Hey, I have a question. I need some help here,’” O’Leary said. “No matter what, she would pick the phone up. She was always the cheerful, happy Tina Sloan Green. Coming out of college and going right into coaching was scary. She was there as this calming voice, just like what she used to do when we were playing.”

O’Leary learned the importance of learning from her assistants and looking for more than talent on the recruiting trail, a space where she’s prolific. She led the Bulldogs to a pair of NCAA tournament appearances. But she, too, was recruited.

The University of Florida planned to start a lacrosse program and were interested in O’Leary. But she was happy at Yale. Still, the allure of starting a program within an established athletics department with a history of successful women’s programs — softball, gymnastics and track & field are among national powers — made the trip from New Haven to Gainesville a must.

There, she met the athletics director at the time, Jeremy Foley. He told her it would be a brand-new program she could put her stamp on, that Florida was building a lacrosse facility, and that he and the administrators would be all-in in supporting her. His elevator pitch showed the Gators would be all in. She was all in, too.

“Jeremy Foley just inspired me to get out there and want to compete, and I wasn’t even going to go on the field,” O’Leary said. “I walked away thinking, ‘Well, I really, really, really want this job.’ It was everything you could ever want. When I got the call that I got the job, it was pure elation.”

Unlike the Marylands of the world, O’Leary had to sell players that the plane ride from their Northeast and Mid-Atlantic hometowns was worth the frequent flier miles. The late aughts predate the high-definition streams of today, so parents likely wouldn’t see every minute of their daughters' careers. And, unlike Northwestern, situated in the non-hotbed of Illinois, there wasn’t a history of success.

None of that mattered to Kitty Cullen, a one-time McDonough standout and one of O’Leary’s first recruits, along with Brittany Dashiell out of rival John Carroll.

“I love the warm weather, so I knew that was going to be cool,” Cullen said. “But there wasn’t a facility. It was this big dirt lot, and they were like, ‘This is where the field is going to go.’ There was no team, so it was kind of wild compared to the other visits, where I met the team and went to practice. But Mandy did such a good job of making us feel comfortable.”

Foley provided an assist.

“I remember him giving this incredible speech about buying into a dream, and that’s what this was going to be,” Cullen said. “And right then and there, I was like, ‘Yes, I want to buy into that dream and experience.’”

Of the 29 players on the inaugural Gators roster, 24 were freshmen. In the years since Florida’s glossy debut in 2010, many Power 5 schools have looked to Florida as the blueprint for how to jumpstart a women’s lacrosse program. But most relied heavily on the transfer portal for their early years, bringing in upperclassmen with one to two years of eligibility left. It’s O’Leary’s way that has led to sustainable success.

“That first recruiting class was phenomenal,” O’Leary said. “It far exceeded my expectations. Brittany Dashiell committed, then Kitty Cullen, and I was in awe of these kids who would take a chance. They were true trailblazers because there was nothing here. There was no tradition. All they had was what we put in front of them — this opportunity to start the program, build it from scratch and leave your mark. Our tradition started with them.”

The Gators went 10-8 in their debut season and 16-4 in 2011, advancing to the second round of the NCAA tournament. By year three, they were playing in the final four at Stony Brook.

“When you’re in it, you don’t realize the magnitude of it,” Cullen said. “Looking back with my teammates, it’s like, ‘That was kind of crazy. What happened?’ It was our third year as a program, and we were in the final four. Two years before that, as a freshman, I remember lining up against Northwestern’s Danielle Spencer, who was an unbelievable player and force of a human, and being terrified.”

But O’Leary instilled in the young roster that they could go toe-to-toe with anyone, and they bought in.

“The whole time, though, we never lost sight of wanting to be the best,” Cullen said. “Mandy set the expectation that we were going to be a winning program, and we rolled with that right away, rather than having any excuses of being too young or new.”

O’Leary brings the same dedication, competitiveness and pitch to the recruiting trail, where she’s shined since reeling in Cullen, et al. Once someone who had to struggle to get her foot in the door as a coach, O’Leary’s foot remains on the gas. And players are lining up not just to give Florida a look, but a commitment.

This fall, five-star midfielders Maria Bragg (Severna Park, Md.), Ava Oblog (West Islip, N.Y.), Anna Von Kennel (Darien, Conn.) and Kate DeWald (Rush-Henrietta, N.Y.) rounded out a massive five-star haul. The four committed in a three-day span in the fall of 2024.

“She’s relentless,” Thorpe said. “She’s usually the last one on the field on every recruiting trip. She’s out there and puts herself out there, and her recruiting skills are second to none.”

O’Leary does more than sell a promise to high school students. She keeps it when they arrive on campus as freshmen.

“It’s a business, and coaches are trying to recruit players, so you’re not always going to get what you see when you’re actually there,” said Gabby Koury, a Florida junior midfielder. “But what was great about Mandy is that things didn’t change when I got here. It obviously gets more competitive once you get into fall ball and the season, but it never made me think differently about her personality or intentions.”  

O’Leary’s perspective remains whether the Gators advance to the final four or bow out before that. Though Florida has made the NCAA tournament each season since 2011, it went 12 years without another trip to the final four.

“When you gauge the success or failure of your program, I think you look at whether they’re super excited with their four or five years of playing for your team,” O’Leary said. “That’s what I fall back on. This place provides a phenomenal opportunity for female students. Competitively, I think all of us want to win a national championship, but if we provide a great opportunity for our players, academically, athletically and socially, I think we’ve done our jobs.”

Florida played on the Friday before Memorial Day in 2024 and 2025. The Gators are always a threat, but the preseason refrain in those seasons was similar. Florida had lost significant talent, attacker Emma LoPinto and goalie Sarah Reznick, before the 2024 season. Florida had to fill holes left by seven of its top eight scorers, including Danielle Pavinelli, entering 2025.

But as with the freshman-heavy inaugural team, O’Leary made belief part of the foundation of the locker room.

“There was never really any doubt about what our success was going to look like,” Koury said. “Mandy holds all our players to a high standard, which is great. She knows everybody's capable of so much, and I think her having that confidence in every player gives us confidence that we can go out on the field, make that difference and fill those spots that we lost.”

O’Leary instilled similar faith in the U.S. sixes roster in 2022, another young, inaugural team composed entirely of collegiate players. The team earned silver at The World Games.

“You talk about heart and grit. They had just come off their collegiate seasons,” O’Leary said. “They had been opponents, and we blended them together. You talk about heart and grit. It was like, ‘OK, we’re all teammates now.’ I give them credit. They were learning — we were all learning — and they were 100 percent committed. They wore that red, white and blue with so much pride and integrity.”

Back on Florida soil, there’s an emerging pride in playing high school lacrosse in the Sunshine State. Top recruits have come out of Florida, including one-time No. 1 incoming freshman Caitlyn Wurzberger, who starred at North Carolina. In recent years, Division I programs have started at Florida State and the University of South Florida. But the Gators remain trailblazers and generational role models.

“It’s so cool to see these Florida kids doing well at all these different colleges across the country and to be able to know that we had a part in growing not only the program in Gainesville, but the boom in lacrosse in Florida,” Cullen said.

O’Leary has been at the center of it. And while she doesn’t focus on accolades or finishes as much as she focuses on relationships, the people in her orbit want her to have the one thing that’s eluded her as a coach: an NCAA championship ring.

“We’re itching for them to get that national championship, and I think it’s going to come in the next couple of years,” Cullen said. “They have a phenomenal recruiting class coming in, too, and a couple of really amazing young players right now. It feels like it's so close. I hope that Mandy does get it. I can't wait until that moment really does happen.”