Wilkes' Historic Turnaround About More Than Just Lacrosse

Alexis Guttilla had one season of eligibility left, but she wasn’t sure she was going to return to the Wilkes women’s lacrosse team for a fifth season.

The graduate student had torn both of her ACLs during her career at Wilkes. Studying in the pharmacy school, she debated whether another potential injury and rehab were worth the risk.

And her first four years with the program weren’t “the best.” The team culture wasn’t strong.

She agreed to meet with the program’s new head coach, Taylor Drumheller, who was hired in September 2025 — and she was very impressed with the conversation.

“I think I was in here for over an hour,” Guttilla said. “We were just talking about everything. She laid everything out very clearly for me: what her expectations were, what she’s all about, and she wanted to hear everything about my past experiences, the good, the bad, everything about it. Everything she said, it really resonated with me. Just hearing her values and standards, I wanted to play for her. It made me excited to play for a coach like that.”

The decision has panned out for Guttilla, Drumheller and the Colonels. The team has enjoyed its best start in program history.

Since 2017, Wilkes hasn’t won more than six games in a single season. From 2023-25, the team combined to win five games, including a winless 2025. In 2026, however, Wilkes won its first eight games. It has dropped its first two games of Landmark Conference play, but that doesn’t diminish the turnaround.

That kind of turnaround is exactly why Drumheller was hired in the first place. She spent two seasons as the head coach of Hendrix College. In 2025, she helped lead the team to its best start ever, and seven wins tied for the most in program history.

Similar to Guttilla, there’s another universe in which Drumheller isn’t with the Wilkes lacrosse program. In May, Drumheller was hired as the new head coach at Juniata College, one of Wilkes’s rivals in the Landmark Conference.

In July, her husband, Jordan — the head coach of the men’s team at Hendrix — was hired for the same role at Wilkes. When the head coaching vacancy for the women’s team opened in August, Drumheller decided she wanted to put her family first, so she applied for and accepted the job at Wilkes.

“It’s what I value in my personal life and in my professional life and how I run my program,” Drumheller said. “It’s built off family and family first.”

Drumheller needed to move quickly once she took the role. By the time she arrived on campus, the players had already been at school for two weeks, taking classes and lifting with the strength coaches.

It was important for Drumheller to not only have an initial team meeting but also hold individual sessions with all players, from graduate students like Guttilla to the incoming freshmen. She wanted to hear their backgrounds and stories while also being honest and direct about the standards and expectations she had for the team.

“As much as trust and respect is given, it’s also earned,” Drumheller said. “I’ve got to earn yours, and you’ve got to earn mine. It’s a very collaborative conversation.”

While Drumheller expressed she wouldn’t make the players do anything she hasn’t done or wouldn’t do herself, she still faced early pushback. Drumheller had conversations with those players, emphasizing they were adults with a choice to make; the players could buy into the standards and expectations and be a part of “something special,” but if not, that was OK because “it’s not for everyone.”

Some players quit, but Drumheller said the conversations went well because of everyone’s honesty and transparency.

Sophomore midfielder Taylor Sparks was inspired by Drumheller’s approach, and she noticed an immediate difference in fall ball. Though she was playing for the Wilkes women’s soccer team and couldn’t participate, she still came to every practice. She was impressed by how quickly the team had improved its stick skills and attitude. It was clear to her the players were trusting the process.

Then, in preparation for the spring, Wilkes won its first scrimmage, something that Sparks had yet to experience as a member of the lacrosse team.

“I had to hug Coach T after. I’m not a hugger at all,” Sparks said. “When that whistle blew, and we won that first scrimmage, I felt grateful for everything we’d been through, and all the work we put in was starting to pay off. That scrimmage felt so refreshing.”

The biggest barometer of change came in the seventh game of the season against King’s College. The rival schools are separate by half a mile, only a few blocks apart.

In 2025, King’s College defeated Wilkes 24-3. Guttilla said the game “messed with us a little bit.” In 2026, however, Wilkes turned the score around, winning 16-4. Sparks and Guttilla combined for nine goals.

“We were properly prepared to prevent a poor performance,” Sparks said, quoting the team’s mantra. “We came out ready to play. It was not an option to lose that game for us. That feeling of finally beating that rival, and doing it together as a team, and beating records on the way, that was a great feeling.”

It hasn’t just been wins that have motivated Drumheller and her players, either. They’ve had several reasons to celebrate.

Against King’s College, Sparks won 10 draw controls to surpass 100 for her career, and Drumheller said everyone in the locker room “got so hyped for her.” Off the field, Guttilla got a good grade on an exam in her pharmacy class and went to Drumheller’s office to proudly show her.

“That’s everything,” Drumheller said. “It’s part of my why.”

“I really appreciate how Coach T supports us,” Guttilla said. “Good or bad, I always want to run in here and let her know about it. I know she always knows how to support me, regardless of how it went. Especially when it goes really well, I’m really excited to tell her. She’s one of the first people I tell.”

For all the good times happening on the field, the coaching staff and players were realistic and acknowledged they would likely have to deal with losing at some point. That first loss came in the team’s first conference game of the season against Juniata.

Wilkes won’t get ahead of itself. All season, Drumheller has worked to keep her team in the moment and solely focused on the next game, which helps keep the players from getting too high or too low.

She also never views a game as a loss.

“I always tell them, ‘We’re never going to lose a game. We’re always going to learn from a game,’” Drumheller said. “I like to call them lessons learned and wins. When that loss comes, it’s another lesson learned. We’re back in the classroom. We’re watching film. We’re breaking it down. We’re learning from what we could have done better, and how can we adapt in the few days of practice or in the classroom watching film, to take those lessons and implement them into the next game.”

Sparks and Guttilla have learned a lot of lessons thanks to the trials and tribulations the Wilkes women’s lacrosse team has endured over the past few years.

A loss in the standings won’t shake them, though, thanks to the insight they’ve gained through those experiences.

“Life is hard,” Sparks said. “Not every day is going to be a win. You can do hard things, and you can learn from it, and you can change that loss or bad day into something better the next day.”