SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Gracie Britton has played lacrosse since she was in the second grade. She made the varsity team at Christian Brothers Academy as an eighth grader and played so well throughout her high school career that she was recruited by her hometown university, perennial top-10 team Syracuse.
And alongside her every step of the way was her father, Pat Britton. He has coached and trained elite athletes in New York state for well over a decade, both in lacrosse and several other sports. In addition to training Gracie individually, he has been her head coach at CBA for the last three years, having taken over the job at the start of 2020.
“He really influenced me to play lacrosse,” Gracie Britton said. “I would always come to practice with my brother and just be around all the girls and that’s really where I started.”
Balancing family relationships within coach-player dynamics has been a staple of youth sports since the dawn of recreation. But in the Britton family, the coaching instructions almost never leave the playing field.
“When we got to the car every day after a game or after practice… then it was father-daughter,” Pat Britton said. “It wasn’t ‘coach’ anymore.”
Though she didn’t grow up planning to go to college in her hometown, as Gracie began considering her options in the fall of 2020, she found herself gravitating towards Syracuse. She had grown up going to games in the Carrier Dome, watching players like her lacrosse idol Kayla Treanor, who will now be her head coach with the Orange.
Gracie committed to SU just two weeks into the official recruiting process.
“Getting to see what it’s like to be part of a team that’s so hungry for a national championship is really driving me to work harder this summer going into the fall,” she said.
Pat realized early on that Gracie had a chance to be a special player, long before she was scoring 73 goals as a senior in just 17 games. A fellow coach came up to him at a lacrosse camp when Gracie was in just the fifth grade and said with the proper instruction, his daughter could earn a Division I scholarship.
But Pat never pressured Gracie to stay close to home for her collegiate career. He hoped she would choose the best fit for herself, whatever that meant. Yet the moment she decided to officially commit to Syracuse was a special one for the entire family.
“[It’s] the realities of, ‘oh, she’s going to be here and we can go to her games,’” her father said. “And for her to be here with new friends who won’t have family here… we can become sort of an extended family for a lot of those kids.”
Though she’s become used to and thrived under Pat’s tutelage, Gracie says she’s ready to make the transition to college. Ready to live away from home for the first time and to do whatever she can to help the Orange finally win their first national title.
Looking back on the eleven years they’ve spent together on a lacrosse field, though, Gracie says playing with her dad will always have a special place in her memories.
“We’ve had so many really, really good conversations,” she said. “Not just about me as a player but me as a person; how it’s helped me grow and changed me in all different kinds of ways and it’s just been really awesome.”
The roles will be different this season — Gracie as a first-time collegiate player, Pat as her number one supporter. But the Brittons will only continue to share new memories in the game of lacrosse.
