The seeds of the first state field hockey championship for Longmeadow (Mass.) were sown back in 2019, right about the time when Ann Simons, the head coach at the school since 1981, was thinking aloud about retirement.
“You have to set a number somewhere, otherwise you keep going and going,” she said to an interviewer at the time. “I have 13 juniors on varsity. I’ve decided that’s my last class I’ll be with.”
That was the plan, but the global pandemic intervened. That, and the performance of that senior class during a six-game fall season under the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s modified pandemic rules. They featured 7-on-7 games with no penalty corners; any defensive foul in the circle short of a strokeable offense was a 23-meter free-in.
“That,” she said about her 6-0 team in 2020, “might have been the strongest team I ever had.”
Retirement talk was off. She realized that her 2023 senior class might have had the moxie to make a run to a state championship. Like Captain Ahab chasing the white whale, Simons kept on coaching for the next two years until, in the fall of 2022, the Lancers won their first state championship in program history.
The fact that Longmeadow won the title, writing a storybook finish for the veteran coach, makes Simons the obvious choice for the TopOfTheCircle.com United States Coach of the Year.
Longmeadow, Mass. is a town of about 15,000 on the east bank of the Connecticut River, and sits right along the southern border of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Longmeadow is also considered a Western Massachusetts team in the eyes of the MIAA. For decades, teams in the counties of Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden were overlooked in the conversation about the best teams in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When statewide tournament competition began in 1984, there was no postseason competition for smaller Division 2 schools in Western Massachusetts. Indeed, there weren’t any Western Massachusetts teams in in the Division 2 tournament until 1996.
There were occasional breakthroughs. In 1999, Greenfield (Mass.), a team led by future Olympian Kelly Doton, won the MIAA Division 2 title. A year later, a Hadley Smith Academy (Mass.) team led by U.S. national teamer Kelly Dostal and coached by the legendary Sherry Webb, did the same.
But after that, the divide between Western Massachusetts and the rest of the state became more pronounced. Longmeadow, despite winning 15 Division 2 West brackets since 2002 (including nine straight between 2011 and 2019), could not win a state title.
Despite setback after setback, Simons kept on coaching, looking to see what she could do differently to improve the team.
“I just loved what I was doing,” Simons said. “I enjoyed watching the kids progress, and, down the road, I knew we had something here, so I decided to stick with it and do the best that I could do. I just wanted to do the best I could for girls’ sports.”
After the 2020-21 COVID-19 fall and spring field hockey seasons in Massachusetts public schools, the entire structure of state competition changed. No more were there to be four regional champions in two enrollment classifications. Instead, there were four MIAA state titles to be won in four statewide brackets of upwards of 32 teams in each.
“We’ve done well in Division 1, but we’re a small school,” Simons said. “It was difficult to compete with the likes of Andover and Acton-Boxborough, even though we had them on our schedule. I like what they did, going to four divisions.”
After Longmeadow fell out of the 2021 Division 2 tournament to Masconomet (Mass.), it was time to get ready for the 2022 season, one which she determined would be her last.
“You could tell that we were going to be a good team,” Simons said. “I just wanted to pick enough freshmen on the 2020 team so that they would improve once they got on varsity. I knew we had some talent.”
The Longmeadow Lancers played superb field hockey to start the season, beating a good Walpole (Mass.) side in late September, only to drop a 1-0 to Andover (Mass.) in early October. In addition, Longmeadow had scheduled games against Connecticut teams, something few Massachusetts teams do.
“Sometimes we may get shortchanged because of power points,” Simons says. “We’re not afraid to go out there and play other competition, to show our kids where they need to be.”
The third week of October featured a challenge unheard of in American field hockey circles: five games in five days. It started with a 4-0 win over West Springfield (Mass.) on Oct. 14th. The next day, the team crossed the nearby border with Connecticut to play Glastonbury, a 1-0 loss. The day after that came against multi-time state champion Acton-Boxborough (Mass.), a 1-0 win. The day after that was local rival South Hadley (Mass.), an 8-0 win, and finished with a 4-1 win over Agawam (Mass.) on Oct. 18th.
“That was tough for us, but we did not play well at Glastonbury, but it seemed as though neither team wanted to win that game,” Simons said. “I said to myself, ‘This cannot happen,’ because we needed to start playing better. We held 1-on-1 talks on the bus on the way to Acton-Boxborough — not just with the starters, but with the bench players. I would love to play everybody, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty, you’re only going to play your top 13 or 14. Some of our players were getting antsy through not playing. But I tried to reassure everyone that they were going to get every opportunity, that you get better when you play better people, so at practice you need to stand out.”
The thinking within the Lancer team was that compared to this five-day block of games, a state tournament should be easy.
“Ever since that game, we clicked more and the team really came together,” Simons said. “They’re such good kids and they wanted to do it for me.”
The senior class was led by forward Riley Harrington, who had 14 goals and 20 assists on the season. For a team that scored 70 goals as a team, the number of assists for the future Quinnipiac student-athlete is an astounding figure.
“Everyone on our team has some type of worth, and you have to make them feel like they are wanted,” Simons said. “I would say that we have good communication on our team, and we have a lot of unselfish kids.”
But it can also be difficult to be trying to push that rock up the hill time after time without winning a state title.
That is, until that Nov. 19th day when Longmeadow beat Bolton Nashoba (Mass.) for the state Division 2 championship, an unforgettable day for the team and its veteran coach. On the day, Longmeadow was able to get goals from Gracie Reisner and Harrington about four minutes apart to turn an early deficit into a 2-1 lead headed into the fourth quarter.
“Many coaches hope to get to a final, and we were in it,” Simons said. “Everyone had a good feeling about it. They said, ‘This is it. We’re going to do it.’ ”
The team, the coaching staff, and Longmeadow supporters from four decades were treated to a thrill ride for that last stanza before the clock hit zero. Then, a wave of exultation enveloped the turf at Westboro (Mass.) as the team celebrated.
“It’s a fantastic way to cap a career. This is one for the ages, it’s epic,” Simons told the media gathered at the game. “We peaked at just the right time, it’s been an interesting year, we’ve had our ups and downs.”
What has kept Simons coaching all these years? A big part of her coaching philosophy is found on the crest of her alma mater, Springfield College. On the seal is a triangle with the words “SPIRIT MIND BODY” on it.
“Some things never change, I mean, that’s the Triangle,” Simons says. “I think I try to live by that model also. But it’s more mental now. In their heads, they need to figure it out; they have to come prepared. They have to want it and push for it. Sometimes they just get a little lazy.”
But Simons has developed a thirst for information and for improvement in her latter years as coach.
“Thank God I’m retired now, because I used to spend five hours a day looking up video of our opponents to see what we needed to do,” she said. “The hard work paid off, obviously.”
Simons joins a list of coaches in the past who have received the award from this site:
2022: Ann Simons, Longmeadow (Mass.)
2021 Ruth Beaton, West Newbury Pentucket (Mass.)
2020-21: Carrie Holman, Vienna James Madison (Va.)
2019: Ali Good, Summit Oak Knoll (N.J.)
2018: Bri Price, Hershey (Pa.)
2017: Mary Werkheiser, Norfolk (Va.) Academy
2016: Jessica Rose Shellenberger, Mount Joy Donegal (Pa.)
2015: Danyle Heilig, Voorhees Eastern (N.J.)
2014: Eileen Donahue, Watertown (Mass.)
2013: Jim Larkin, Fredericksburg Chancellor (Va.)
2012: Ashly Fishell-Shaffer, Edgemere Sparrows Point (Md.)
2011: Lil Shelton, Severna Park (Md.)
2010: Sarah Catlin, Cincinnati St. Ursula (Ohio)
2009: Danyle Heilig, Voorhees Eastern (N.J.)
2008: Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, Pewaukee Trinity Academy (Wisc.)
2007: Wendy Reichenbach, Palmyra (Pa.)
2006: Barb Dwyer, Ladue Horton Watkins (Mo.)
2005: Robin Woodie, Fredericksburg Stafford (Va.)
2004: Monica Dennis, Grosse Pointe South (Mich.)
2003: Kearney Francis, Silver Spring Springbrook (Md.)
2002: Slade Gormus, Midlothian James River (Va.)
2001: Amanda Janney, Ft. Worth Trinity Valley (Tex.)
2000: Eileen Allan, Pompton Lakes (N.J.)
1999: Amy Wood, Bethesda-Chevy Chase (Md.)
1998: Diane Chapman, Garden City (N.J.) and Brenda Beckwith, Winslow (Maine)
1997: Maryellen Clemencich, Allentown (N.J.)
1996: Tracey Paul, Escondido San Pasqual (Calif.)
1995: Nancy Fowlkes, Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox)
1994: Mike Shern, Lacey (N.J.) Township
1993: Pat Toner, Newtown Council Rock (Pa.)
TopOfTheCircle.com 
Dear Al,
I don’t know how to thank you!! The article is perfect and since we talked a couple of weeks ago we have been reading all your articles. You have done amazing research and your articles are always captivating!! I sincerely appreciate this honor… in fact, I am truly humbled…. Thank you for always appreciating the little towns as well as the larger one… it really was an epic ending to my 42 year reign…
Happy New Year and I look forward to reading some great news about sports in general!!
Ann Simons
Longmeadow 🖤🏑