Host of new mentors to take reins in upcoming athletic seasons

As the University welcomes more than 240 freshman athletes to its various fields, courts, pitches, pools, rinks, and turfs this fall season, a group of new mentors and coaches will also settle in for their rookie season with the Crimson. Below are some of the new hires.

A member of the 1998 national championship tennis team with the University of Florida, Traci Green was named head coach of the women’s tennis program this past August. Following her success on the court as an undergrad, Green went on to an accomplished Division I coaching career at Temple University. During her three seasons in Philadelphia, Green helped turn around a program that had won just four matches the season before her arrival. In their final campaign with the Owls this past year, Green’s team compiled a 16-4 overall record and appeared in the championship match of the Atlantic 10 tourney. Green serves as a tennis coordinator and advisory board member of the Black Women in Sport Foundation and is active with the USTA High Performance.

In lacrosse news, the women’s program recently named Lisa Miller and Sarah Albrecht as the team’s head and assistant coaches, respectively. The 2007 Big East Coach of the Year, Miller takes the helm of the Crimson squad after 10 seasons at Syracuse, where she finished with a 106-53 record and six NCAA championship appearances. Albrecht, meanwhile, arrives in Cambridge after a season coaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Meanwhile, Christopher Smith joins the squash coaching staff as an assistant after a three-year stint as the head coach of Northeastern. The inaugural head coach for the Huskies, Smith helped to elevate the program to the top of the Chaffee Division by his second year.

In Harvard waters, men’s swimming head coach Tim Murphy recently named Mark Sowa an assistant coach. Sowa spent the past two years on the coaching staff of the Bahamian national team and served as the head senior competitive coach of the Barracuda Swim Club, which won two national championships in the Bahamas.

An assistant with the women’s program at Maryland in 2005, Sowa helped the Terps to their first Atlantic Coast Conference championship.

Harvard Athletics has also named Patrick Foley, a former USA Hockey assistant coach and three-year captain at the University of New Hampshire, an assistant coach of the men’s ice hockey program. Foley comes to Harvard following two years as an assistant coach with the U.S. National Team Development Program, where he helped guide Team USA to a gold medal in the 2006 International Ice Hockey Federation Under-18 World Championship and a silver medal at the 2007 championship.

— Compiled by Andrew Brooks