Coach Tucker Kear is the new Skidmore College lacrosse coach and is also a very accomplished lacrosse player in his own right. As the third coach of Skidmore's team in four years he has an uphill battle facing him to turn the program around, but he is ready.
Coach Kear played his High School Lacrosse at John Jay in Westchester NY, where many of our current students hail from. After graduating, Kear went on to play at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst, a Division I program in Western Massachusetts. His shining moment from college lacrosse occurred his freshman year playing against Johns-Hopkins University in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament at Johns-Hopkins. He claims that the intense atmosphere and large crowd created the most memorable sporting event he has ever been a part of. Coach Kear also hopes that Skidmore can eventually allow his players to create memories like Johns-Hopkins created for him.
After college, Kear became Coach Kear at Union College, where he coached for six years. During this time during which their team created a winning tradition. From there, Coach Kear started a program at Bard, then spent one year as an assistant at Dartmouth College., and he finally landed a job as the head coach at Skidmore College. When asked about why he became a coach, Coach Kear replied that coaching is his only real passion, aided by the fact that his father coached him at John Jay, and the fact that both of his brothers coach.
Once he decided to pursue coaching there were only a few programs that really attracted Coach Kear. Skidmore, in fact, was, “One of two jobs [Kear] would leave coaching at the Division I level for”. You can’t blame him, he lived in Saratoga while coaching at Union, he met his fiancé here, and he wanted to raise his now one-year-old son in Saratoga.
As for coaching at Skidmore, Kear understands that his first job is teaching his players to play hard and work hard on and off the field. He plans to have his team play a fast paced game and really wants to push the question, “How smart can we play while playing our hardest?”. He is also very happy with the player pool that he has inherited from Coach Hart, who has moved onto other employment opportunities.
When asked if he had anything that he wants the students and his team to know, he had only one statement:, “I’m not going anywhere and my recruits are going to come here to play for me”.
Lacrosse games start on February 27th , so don’t forget to get down to the field to support the team.