New Field Hockey Coach for Centreville High School

Demby Banbury has plenty of experience with endings. Now, the teacher and veteran coach is looking forward to a beginning.

Banbury, who will celebrate her 50^th birthday this year, is jumping back into the Northern Region’s field hockey coaching ranks after more than five years off.

She was part of a coaching staff that led to a state title in 1986, so there’s no doubt she knows the game, and how to achieve success. Tanned from her years coaching just about every sport under the sun, her University of Michigan visor keeping her blond hair back, Banbury answers questions quickly and surely. She said she’s energized by a return to coaching, but also anxious.

 “It’s an exciting, scary challenge,” she said. “Of course I’m nervous. I get nervous the first day of school and I’ve been teaching for 27 years.”

She has been a biology and student government teacher at Centreville for three years, so she knows some of her new players. But they don’t know her as a coach.

The next couple weeks of early-morning summer practices will serve not only to familiarize the players with game strategy, but also with their new coach.

Banbury took a break from coaching because she wanted to see her son Pierce, now 12, grow up. The boy who took his first steps on the McLean field hockey field is now playing basketball and other sports and has his own agenda. He’ll be in middle school this year and Banbury said the combination of the opening at Centreville and her son’s relative independence made this the right time to get back to the game.

She’s proud of past teams—be they in swimming, tennis, lacrosse or field hockey—that have grown as the season progressed and upset higher-ranked teams in the district or regional playoffs. Those teams, Banbury said, were willing to make changes and implement new plays midseason. With a team that’s new to her, as the Wildcats will be this year, flexibility is key.

“They’ve already asked me what kind of system I’m going to play, and I’ve been very honest with them and said I don’t know yet, I haven’t seen you play,” she said. “I have to figure out who’s playing what position. We may start out with one system, and as we implement some changes and skills, we’ll go to a different system. It’s all about adapting and strategy.”

If any of the Wildcats are skeptical about their new coach, they shouldn’t be.

“She’s a huge motivator for her athletes. Any of us on the team would have done anything for her,” said Meghan Punaro, a 2002 McLean graduate who played field hockey for Banbury. “We were always trying to go above and beyond what her expectations were for us.”

Lindsay North, who was on Banbury’s lacrosse team at McLean and ended up winning four national titles at Northwestern University, said Banbury made a huge impact on her athletic career.

“It’s because of her that I decided to play lacrosse,” said North, who was debating between soccer and lacrosse in high school. “It’s because of her that I went after it the way I did and wound up having my dream come true at Northwestern.”

About seven years ago, Banbury thought she had coached her last season. She made her intentions clear to then-McLean activities director Tom Herman, but the Highlanders found themselves without a field hockey coach late in the summer and Banbury filled the void in August. She had hardly any time to prep for the season, and it showed in the opening games.

“We were the bottom of the barrel that year, but we upset [Thomas Jefferson] to make it into the regions,” Banbury recalled. “None of [the players] had been to camp—but we upset Oakton in the first round at regions, so you never know.”

Herman said that year was one of Banbury’s most successful because the team continued growing as the season wore on.

Hanna Lee, who will be a senior forward/midfielder for the Wildcats this year, said she’s looking forward to the season with Banbury at the helm. The team went 7-9 last year and was eliminated from the regional playoffs in a first-round loss to.

“We have eight returning seniors, a lot of us did a camp at VCU and we’ve been playing in a summer league. I’m really optimistic and excited about this year,” she said.

Lee said she thinks the team is mature enough to handle a new coach and whatever changes come along with that.

“It’s definitely going to be different than how it was, because the two are very different,” Lee said, referring to Banbury and former coach Meg Doran. “But we have a lot of strong returning athletes so I know it’s going to be a great season.”

Back in June the team had a meeting and Banbury passed out field hockey balls to all of her prospective players. “Work before glory,” read the inscription. The challenge, along with keeping a journal of their summer workouts, was to wear the ink off the balls with practice.

“I haven’t gotten all of it off, but I’ve been working on it,” Lee said with a laugh.

Lee said she and her teammates are also looking forward to having a coach who also works at Centreville. That, said North, was one of the best parts of her lacrosse experience at McLean.

The players would wear their uniforms to school on game days, in an effort to elicit support from classmates and teachers, but they would also bring in snacks—some healthy, some not—to Banbury’s classroom. Between periods, players would drop in for a bite.

“We got to look forward to seeing each other and [it reinforced the idea] that this was something we were all in together,” North said.

Banbury said she hopes the team’s trip to Virginia Beach on Aug. 20 will help get the players on the same page. It will be their last cram session before the season starts with a game at 10 days later.

While she’s looking forward to the competition of the Concorde District—especially the Oct. 5 game against powerhouse —she’s circled Oct. 11 on her calendar. That’s the day the Wildcats host , where her husband John is the principal.

“I want to tell my husband ‘you’re going down,’” Banbury said with a smile.