| Hall of Fame head coach Char Morett was named the 2005 Mideast Region Coach of the Year, as voted on by the NFHCA. Morett, who guided her team to a Big Ten Championship this year, is now in the running for National Coach of the Year honors. |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. December 7, 2005 - Penn State field hockey head coach Char Morett has been named the 2005 Dita/NFHCA Division I Mideast Region Coach of the Year. She is now one of five coaches in the running for the National Field Hockey Coaches Association National Coach of the Year award, which will be announced at the NFHCA Banquet on Jan. 7, 2006 in Philadelphia.
The honor is the fifth time Morett has won Mideast Coach of the Year accolades. She previously won the award in 1990, 1991, 1993 and 2000.
This season the Hall of Fame coach led the Nittany Lions to a record-setting year, the 19th for Morett on the Penn State sideline. Her team went a perfect 6-0 in Big Ten play capturing the program's fourth Conference title. Morett, whose team finished the year 17-4, guided the Lions to a program-record 17 straight wins this season, in the process collecting her 300th win at the University, a 5-0 victory at Temple on Sept. 14. The Lions went a perfect 10-0 at home this year, the first season at the University's new state-of-the-art field hockey facility that Morett was instrumental in constructing.
Under Morett's tutelage this season, two players were named to the first-team all-Conference squads, while Natalie Berrena (State College, Pa.) won Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year honors. Berrena went on to win first-team All-Mideast Region and first-team All-America accolades, as well. Sophomore Kiersten Wood (Lititz, Pa.) also won first-team All-Big Ten honors, while seniors Bekah Hostetler (Hershey, Pa.) and Sara Cahill (Virginia Beach, Va.) were selected to the second team.
Morett has built Penn State's field hockey team into one of the University's most successful programs. She has led her Lions to four Big Ten titles, four Big Ten Tournament championships, four NCAA National Semifinal appearances and one trip to the NCAA National Championship game. She has coached 22 different All-Americans and five Big Ten Players of the Year. Morett has snagged Big Ten Coach of the Year honors three times, including this season, and her 347 career wins, which include three years at Boston College, ranks fourth all-time among Division I coaches.
She inherited a program in 1987 that had posted double-digit victories in each of its last eight seasons, and she has kept that streak alive. Penn State now has 28-straight double-digit win seasons, the longest ever streak in Division I field hockey history. Morett was also on the sideline when the Nittany Lions ended national powerhouse Old Dominion's streak of 66-straight wins with a 2-1 win at ODU in 1993.
Morett also found success in the blue and white as a student-athlete. She competed for Penn State from 1975-78 under fellow Hall of Famer Gillian Rattray, and is the only three-time All-American in the program's history. She ranks No. 8 in school history in goals with 50, and holds the single-game record with five.
Morett joins four other coaches as All-Region honorees. Those coaches include: Missy Megarg, Maryland, MidAtlantic; Sally Starr, Boston University, Northeast; Beth Anders, Old Dominion, South; and Amy Robertson, Indiana, West.