By Steven Sellers, Courier Assistant
Sports Editor:
Senior Night’s
special to Kitty Palmer. She sees it as an opportunity to celebrate the seniors
of both high school teams, not just the ones at home. At a Senior Night for Guilford field hockey
awhile back, Kitty had her team and its opponent—which happened to be Daniel
Hand—form parallel lines. Then she congratulated all of the seniors and expressed
her respect and admiration for both schools and their players.
Kitty spoke from
experience. As the head coach of Guilford
field hockey and Daniel Hand girls’ tennis, she knows the many similarities of
the neighboring towns and celebrates the talents of “her girls” regardless of
their residence.
“The athletes are
very much the same,” Kitty says of Guilford
and Hand. “There’s this heated rivalry between the schools, but I always tell
the kids, ‘You’re all the same,’ meaning that they’re all great athletes with
great families and similar goals.”
Kitty’s relaxed,
low-key approach is one reason for her success. Coaching seems to come
naturally to the Guilford resident, who played
field hockey, basketball, and tennis for Lake Forest
College in Chicago. When she moved to Connecticut, an opportunity to coach middle
school sports started a path she’s still on today.
“When I first moved
to Guilford, I had a friend at Baldwin Middle School
who told me they needed a field hockey coach so I did that for three years,”
Kitty says. “There was an opening at Guilford
High School so I moved
over the varsity team. I also coached a couple of years of softball at Daniel
Hand.”
Kitty’s affinity for
tennis came to the fore when, in 2000, she took over as girls’ tennis coach at
Daniel Hand.
“I was teaching
tennis at the Madison Swim and Racquet Club,” Kitty explains, “[and] Hand was
looking for a [girls’ tennis] coach so it made sense for me to apply for it.”
Both of her teams have
shined ever since. Last spring, the Tigers went 13-2, beat reigning SCC champ Cheshire for the tennis title
and went into the Class M State Tournament as the fifth seed. Hand went all the
way to the championship round, losing 5-2 in a close contest to New Canaan.
In field hockey, Palmer
had to fill the gaps left by the graduation of 13 seniors last season and still
came away with an 11-6-0-1 record. The Indians, the seventh-seed, advanced to
the second round of the Class M State Tournament before falling Pomperaug, the
eventual state champion.
Palmer says she
approaches both sports the same way, rejecting any notion that tennis is any
less a team sport than field hockey.
“They’re all team
sports,” says Palmer. “Everybody has to pull together. In tennis, every player
is counting on the other one for points so the team can win. In any sport I’ve
coached, I’ve always approached it the same way. The focus always has to be on
the team, not the individual.”
The coach is still
an athlete, too, which also helps explain her winning records at Guilford and Hand.
“I still compete in
paddle tennis, both in New England and
nationally,” she says. “I play indoor field hockey in the winter and, of
course, I’m always playing tennis.”
Sidelines with Kitty Palmer
Why do you coach?
Having played
sports, I love being on the field. Now I get lot of satisfaction seeing my
players have fun and do well.
What are your most
memorable sports moments?
Last spring, the
[Hand girls’] tennis team almost beat New Canaan
for the state championship. We lost 5-2, but we were so close. In field hockey,
I remember going down to Greenwich
one year. We were a huge underdog and we took them to four overtimes. Nobody
expected [Guilford]
to do that.
Pictured: Kitty Palmer (center) is a two-sport coach, bridging the rivalry
between Guilford High
School and Daniel
Hand High
School.
Photo by Steve Sellers