Field hockey coach’s impactful leadership recognized with personal milestone

Field hockey head coach Kaitlyn Wahila gained her 100th win with the Bombers on Oct 17. Wahila has been coaching with Ithaca College for nine seasons, and in seven seasons, she has led the field hockey team to a winning record.

Wahila and associate head coach Mo Ordnung were named Liberty League Coaches of the Year in 2021 and again in 2023. The pair has led IC to numerous Liberty League final games and even won the Liberty League in 2024.

Ordnung said that success took time to build between the duo as soon as Wahila came in.

“I had the very unique perspective of having been here and then watching her come in,” Ordnung said. “I was very young in my coaching career, so I had only had so many experiences. And when Coach [Wahila] came in, she was very adamant she was very about building the culture.”

Wahila has led her team to all of this success through a multiyear span of changing the culture to a team-oriented system, consisting of preparing players for both on-the-field play and for the real world.

“I think back to my first year here, we changed a lot of things,” Wahila said. “We definitely needed to focus on our team culture, and … a huge part of our success is our ability to really work on that off the field team culture.”

Wahila played Division l field hockey at the University of New Hampshire. After her collegiate career ended because she wanted to focus more on her academics, she wanted to finish her degree. She decided to attend Ithaca College to finish her graduate program to get her master’s, but she still wanted to be a part of a field hockey family. That led Wahlia to become a graduate assistant under IC head coach Tracey Houk.

Wahila started her coaching career in Ithaca. She was a graduate student preparing for her master’s degree and never expected to be working at Ithaca College, coaching their Division III field hockey program and ultimately winning IC’s first Liberty League 18 years later.

Throughout her first year coaching, she gained experience under Houk. Wahila said she was surprised at the amount of responsibilities she gained in her first coaching experience: being able to lead practices, drills and even give words of advice to the first group of women she ever coached.

“She really allowed me to have thoughts and ideas,” Wahila said. “I remember there were times in the off-season where she would let me run practice.”

After that first season of her coaching career ended, she said she couldn’t help but want more.

“I knew when the season ended that I wanted to eventually become a head coach at the Division III level,” Wahila said.“There was something really special about working with Division III student athletes … they were super passionate about the sport of field hockey, and they weren’t on any type of athletic scholarship.”

The passion at the Division III level is demonstrated with senior midfielder Brenna Schoenfeld and how Wahila pushes her players to do more, and the players meet the expectations with their passion for the sport.

“She set standards, and I love standards, and I love beating standards, and I love being above expectations and everything that I do,” Schoenfeld said. “And I think that kind of fully developed coming in, I always wanted to be, and always strive to be a better person and a better player.”

Following her time at Ithaca, Wahila realized that coaching was the career for her, so she became an assistant coach at Siena College from 2007-11.

Then she finally became a head coach at Susquehanna University from 2011-17. But in her final year at Susquehanna, she got a call from Tracey Houk. She told Wahila that she was planning on retiring and highly recommended applying to be the new head coach at Ithaca College.

“At the time, my husband and I had just had our second kid,” Wahila said. “We were like, ‘We have a house. We’re starting to feel good here in Pennsylvania. Do we want to pick up and move our life back to New York?’ And we eventually decided [to] give it a try, see what happens.”

Both Wahila and Ordnung admit that it’s taken time to build the culture that they both love and is successful. It started from the top. The pair is in a group chat with the girls and they let all their players know that they are more than IC field hockey players. This creates an almost friendship between Wahila and her players that rivals the decades-long coach and players dynamic.

Schoenfeld said she noticed this personal touch on her first visit with the team and talked to coach Wahila throughout her entire recruitment process.

“[The relationship with Coach Wahila] started off during the recruiting process, when I got to know her a little bit,” Schoenfeld said. “Just [her] being able to support us in every way kind of sold me in that aspect [that] we are people and then just supporting us through it all.”

Wahila’s relationship with the players also extends off the field, helping each and every one of them be their best selves in the real world. Former striker and current assistant coach, Juilana Valli ’24, who was part of the 2024 Liberty League title team, said she has seen firsthand Wahila’s strive to make the girls better off the field.

“Coach [Wahlia] is the exact definition of a powerful woman,” Valli said. “She knows what she wants when it comes to field hockey, when it comes to life. Just having such a powerful woman figure in my life … seeing a woman that’s so confident in herself, in what she believes, is really important for girls our age [to see].”

The mentorship that the players notice in Wahila has also been noticed by Ordnung.

“She just does an incredible job making sure that field hockey continues to be the vessel of learning and growing and making the experience worthwhile,” said Ordnung. “Field hockey is the instrument used to do all these other things.”

As Coach Wahila celebrates her 100th win as a Bomber, her time at Ithaca has seen major success through the changes she has brought, creating a championship pedigree field hockey program. She has become a great mentor and confidante to both her colleagues and players alike.

“I’m so proud of her,” Valli said. “I am so lucky to know her as a person and as a friend. She has made me the person that I am today.”