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Kayla Treanor’s coaching career began in elementary school. For her birthday each year, her father, Mark, took her to a Niskayuna High School (New York) boy’s basketball practice. Mark was the school’s longtime head coach and used it as one of her birthday presents.

“Now, I look back at it and I put my hand in a huddle every day with a team,” Treanor said. “But as a little girl that meant the absolute world to me.”

In her third year as Syracuse women’s lacrosse’s head coach, Treanor helmed the Orange to a No. 2 national ranking, just one year after bringing them to the Final Four. While roaming the sidelines of the JMA Wireless Dome, her father’s philosophies that she harnessed from a young age take over.

Mark started at Niskayuna in the mid-1980s before Treanor and her older sister, Alyssa, were born. While serving as a special education teacher, he also was the head football coach. In the winter, he was the junior varsity coach for boy’s basketball and rounded out the school year coaching JV baseball in the spring.

Eventually, Mark zeroed in on basketball, becoming the boy’s head coach for over 20 years and stopped once his daughters got to high school. Alyssa — now the head women’s lacrosse coach at Union College — said her father was methodical in his work. He often went to coaching conventions while being subscribed to multiple coach’s magazines.

“Mark is a very prepared guy and thought out person,” Niskayuna Athletic Director Larry Gillooley said. “How he conveyed those organization and preparation skills onto his kids, I think that helped them benefit as athletes but also as coaches now.”

Kayla (front) and Alyssa (back left) pose with their father Mark (back right) at a young age. The Treanor sisters grew their love for sports by watching their father coach. Courtesy of Mark Treanor

Treanor and Alyssa played on the wrestling mats behind the bleachers while Mark coached. As they grew up, they became closer to the game, elevating to water girls and studying film with their father.

Though, lacrosse is where Treanor truly encapsulated her father’s coaching methods. She and Alyssa weren’t introduced to lacrosse until they were in seventh and eighth grade, respectively. Meredith McKee, a then-student and lacrosse player at Niskayuna, introduced it to them while babysitting, Alyssa said.

Treanor’s basketball mindset helped her learn lacrosse as she implemented things that Mark taught her. Lacrosse’s offensive game is similar to that of basketball through its picking concepts and though the ball can’t usually be shot from long range, lacrosse has the added advantage of going behind the net.

Defensively, teams rely on a zone or man defense, just like basketball. Former SU midfielder Sierra Cockerille said playing defense in lacrosse without your stick is the same as playing basketball defense. Treanor sometimes has players do one-on-one’s without their sticks, mirroring the movements, according to Cockerille.

“I completely look at lacrosse in terms of basketball,” Treanor said. “I always have. It’s the way that I’ve understood the game.”

Before becoming a college head coach, Treanor acted as one while competing at Niskayuna. After starring on the soccer field in the fall, Treanor excelled on the basketball court. Sarah Neely, Niskayuna’s girl’s basketball coach, taught a few plays, expecting it to take a little while for her young players to learn them. Yet Treanor immediately understood, even asking about secondary options within those offensive sets.

It was the same way with lacrosse. Though fairly new to the game, Treanor translated concepts to fellow teammates, helping them improve.

“She was a coach on the field from day one,” former Niskayuna girl’s lacrosse head coach Peter Melito said. “She kind of understood some of the challenges a coach would face.”

Amid her playing career, Treanor was already preparing for her future. While getting recruited, she told schools she wanted to coach after college. Treanor told then-Syracuse women’s lacrosse head coach Gary Gait that was her passion and what she wanted to pursue.

“She approached the game like a coach’s kid would,” Lisa Miller, SU’s former head coach from 1998-2007, said.

While playing in the 2016 Final Four her senior season, multiple Syracuse alumnae came to support the team. Miller and former goalie Carla Farkes, formerly Carla Gigon, were in attendance. Miller served as the head coach at Harvard while Farkes was an assistant. Everyone knew Treanor wanted to get into coaching, according to Miller. It was just a matter of where.

Treanor was offered an assistant position at SU by Gait, but Miller and Farkes said they found out Treanor had a lot of cousins on her father’s side in the Boston area, possibly attracting her to Harvard. And it did. Treanor began her coaching career in August 2016 as an assistant on the Crimsons’ staff.

Treanor’s presence immediately impacted Harvard’s attack, elevating it from 169 goals in 2016 to 206 in 2017. Utilizing a hands-on approach, Miller and Farkes both said Treanor was ready to take over the offense from the moment she arrived.

“She’s a student of the game and I think she gets that from her dad,” Miller said. “They probably watched a lot of basketball film and she was brought around that a lot.”

After one year at Harvard, Boston College head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein asked Treanor to join her staff. She joined, and the Eagles won the national championship in 2021. Then, Treanor returned to Syracuse when Gait moved to the men’s team and took over the women’s side.

Returning to Syracuse, Treanor has led the team to two deep postseason runs. With her team at SU, she still uses concepts from basketball and her father’s teachings.

Kayla Treanor (right) celebrates with midfielder Maddy Baxter (left) after a NCAA Tournament second round win over Johns Hopkins. Treanor led the Orange to the Final Four in her second year at the helm. Courtesy of SU Athletics

Cockerille and former SU attack Megan Carney said she often shows clips from college basketball games to compare ideas and break down film, giving players an alternative way of understanding.

“She would use a lot of examples from it and I think that a lot of her coaching philosophy is from him and being coached by him her whole life,” Carney said.

As Treanor thrives at SU, Mark has remained a coach, too. After retiring from Niskayuna, he joined Union College’s men’s basketball coaching staff as an assistant, serving in the role for the past seven seasons.

This past winter break, Treanor attended her father’s practices at Union. She noticed how the team defended screens, an idea she could translate to lacrosse.

“He always says to me ‘if this was basketball, this is what I would do,’” Treanor said. “And I’m constantly bouncing ideas off of him in terms of strategy.”

Mark has also followed his two daughters and began coaching lacrosse as an assistant on Niskayuna’s girl’s team. But to this day, Mark’s coaching from when Treanor was a little girl is what drives her fondness for the profession.

“I grew up around it and absolutely loved it. And I think I love it so much because my dad really loved it,” Treanor said.

Published on April 10, 2024 at 11:51 pm

Contact Aiden at: amstepan@syr.edu | @AidenStepansky