This article appears in the May/June edition of US Lacrosse Magazine. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription.

Amber Falcone McKenzie is trying to coach a Hutchison School girls’ lacrosse practice when she hears her 3-year-old son, Storm, yelling at one of her players.

“You need to catch the ball,” he howls.

“He’s a coach’s kid,” McKenzie says. “He spends hours and hours at fields and watching football practice and lacrosse.”

McKenzie’s husband, Norval, is the newly hired running backs coach for the University of Louisville football team.

Last year, Storm and Dad cheered as Mom returned to playing lacrosse for the first time since 2014, one year after McKenzie won a gold medal with the U.S. women’s national team at the World Cup in Canada.

As a defender, McKenzie helped the Command win the championship in the inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Lacrosse League. The Command defeated the Brave, 12-11, on a last-second transition goal after McKenzie came up with a turnover with 28 seconds left.

“It was exciting to see,” Norval McKenzie says. “I tried to talk her out of retiring when she decided to. She was very adamant about being a mom and staying at home and doing those things that she always wanted to do. I’m in her support system. I’m her No. 1 fan. I was encouraging her to go play. Go have fun. You only get so many opportunities, so why stop? It was exciting to see her play again and have success.”

“Our first-year experience was obviously great,” McKenzie says. “Winning was amazing. I feel like I know what the expectation is like. Before, I didn’t know what the expectation was. I know the level of competition. I know what to expect.”

McKenzie played in the WPLL last year while balancing a hectic schedule that had her working part-time in a boutique back in Arkansas, commuting an hour and a half each way to assist at Hutchison, and flying to coach the Eagle Stix Lacrosse club in Atlanta and weekend tournament sites.

“It wasn’t terrible,” McKenzie said. “I had such a great support system. My mom helps with Storm every single weekend.”

And with the WPLL centralized in Baltimore, it made traveling a lot more convenient. In January, the McKenzies started another exciting chapter in their lives with another move. Norval was hired at Louisville, a Power 5 school, after three years as running backs and special teams coach at Arkansas State. He was one of 53 finalists out of 1,500 Division I assistant coaches nationwide in 2018 for the Broyles Award, which honors college football’s top assistant coaches. 

“Storm always wants to go to football practice,” McKenzie says. “He’s so over lacrosse.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOUISVILLE ATHLETICS

His mother still has three jobs, all in lacrosse. McKenzie, who starred at North Carolina from 2006-2009, isn’t working at the boutique after she and Storm moved into a family’s backhouse in Memphis closer to Hutchison in January. They moved again — to Kentucky — after the Tennessee state championship May 11.

“Norval is getting his feet wet in Louisville,” McKenzie says. “It is nice for him. He has the ability to go be all-in and not worry about his family not knowing anyone there. It actually works out well. It’s a little hard, but we’re making it work.”

McKenzie will continue to work with Eagle Stix, and she has been elevated to head coach at Hutchison, a nationally ranked girls’ lacrosse program aiming for its ninth straight state title. McKenzie has toned down her coaching from when she was an assistant coach at Vanderbilt and Furman, but she’s happy to be on the sidelines again. 

“It’s true that you do miss things when you’re away from them,” McKenzie says. “Because I wasn’t surrounded by lacrosse all the time, I did miss it.”

McKenzie will be on the sidelines longer than she anticipated. She’s pregnant with her second child, due in the early fall. McKenzie had hoped to join Kristin Igoe, a mother of two, as the only mothers playing for the Command again, but she will coach instead on Amy Patton’s staff.

“It’s fun that I get to coach the same team that I played on, because I have developed relationships with the players,” McKenzie says. “I do know them a different way than the other coaches do, because I’ve been on the field with them. It might be helpful to have me on the sideline, because I have more of an insight into how each of them work.”

For McKenzie, it’s something new after coaching and playing at the college and high school levels. It will keep her on the move right into her third trimester. 

“When you’re coaching in the WPLL, you’re not necessarily coaching skills, you’re coaching talent,” McKenzie says. “You’re coaching chemistry and connections with players. What kind of defense can we run that will work? What kind of offense works for our dynamic of players? What are we looking to do when we have the ball with 50 seconds left? That’s a very different type of coaching that I’ll have to learn and develop. When you’re coaching younger girls, you’re coaching skill and a lot more technical coaching.”

Coaching or playing, there was never a doubt that McKenzie would return to the WPLL after such a positive experience her first year.

“She’s very, very passionate about the sport,” Norval McKenzie says. “She’s very passionate about the game and what it brings for women and all it stands for. It’s something very exciting for her and very near and dear to her heart. Any time she can impact young girls’ lives and be around the game, she’s going to do it.”

McKenzie also plans to return to the field for one final hurrah as a player in 2020. It would come as a 33-year-old mother of two children, but she is hungry to play again. 

“My goal is to have a healthy baby, coach this season with the Command, and come back for one more season,” McKenzie says. “So I come back in the 2020 season and play, and then be done. That’s the plan.”

“I was not done,” she adds. “I loved it. I loved the experience. I loved playing. I loved being on a team and being around the girls. I’m not done. If my body allows me not to be done, I’m not mentally done.”