Ending the Wait for Number Eight!

Ending the Wait for Number Eight!

Saturday, February 22 – Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Greg Gephart Fund Clinic Committee is preparing for the eighth GGF Field Hockey Clinic to be held the weekend of February 22-23 at The Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas. We are pleased to announce that Christy Utter and Amanda Janney will follow in the capable footsteps of Jen Halliday as Clinic Directors.

Christy Utter is currently the head field hockey coach and Director of Alumni Relations at Holland Hall School in Tulsa. Her illustrious field hockey career started at Holland Hall where Greg Gephart coached her. She went on to play Division One field hockey at the University of North Carolina where Christy helped to lead the Tar Heels to back-to-back NCAA Championships (1995 & 1996), and was Co-Captain on the 1996 squad. She was an ACC All-Conference selection in 1996, and was named to the 1995 NCAA All-Tournament Team.

She was Top Assistant on the field hockey staff at Brown University for 4 years. Prior to that, Christy spent eight seasons at the University of Louisville. She was Associate Head Coach when Louisville won back-to-back MAC Championships (2003 & 2004) and made their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

Christy was active in the Futures Olympic Developmental Program, serving as the Head Coach for the Houston site (1997 & 1998) and the Head Coach for the Louisville site (1999 to 2006).

Amanda Janney has an extremely successful history of involvement with field hockey on the high school, college, and USFHA Futures and Nationals level. Amanda is currently in her ninth season as head coach of Temple University field hockey. Amanda led the Owls to eight consecutive Atlantic 10 Tournaments. Under her tutelage, Temple players have celebrated 42 all-conference accolades, 6 Player of the Year awards and 2 All-American honors in addition to Atlantic-10 Coach of the Year honors.

Prior to accepting the position at Temple, Janney, a '99 graduate of Wake Forest, spent two seasons as an assistant at Penn (2003, 2004) and one season at James Madison (2002).

Following Wake Forest graduation, Amanda assumed the position of head field hockey coach at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, Texas. The coaching stint at TVS brought Janney back to her alma mater, where she led the school to its first-ever undefeated season, posting an overall 53-3-1 record and was twice crowned Southwest Preparatory Champion.

Christy and Amanda are busy inviting outstanding college field hockey coaches to volunteer a weekend of their time to share their expertise with players, coaches, and umpires who will be attending the 2014 GGF clinic.

The Greg Gephart Fund for Youth Field Hockey was created in memory of long time field hockey fan, coach, and mentor, Greg Gephart. Greg coached field hockey at Holland Hall in Tulsa, at Kinkaid in Houston, at Durham Academy in Durham NC, and, as an assistant coach, at Duke in the 1990s. Greg passed away in December 1999. In 2000, many of his friends and family came together to start the GGF Fund to enable us to continue Greg’s quest to provide quality field hockey experience for young players. Through his involvement with USFHA and the Futures program and by hosting weekend clinics, he believed that the way to improve the level of play was to get the players, coaches, and umpires together to continually improve their skills.

For this reason, the GGF Clinic is 3 clinics in one. The Players Clinic is for players in the 7th through 12 the grades who have played field hockey on a school or club team. Players are grouped by experience and position. They rotate through sessions where they have the opportunity to work with college coaches to improve their skills.

The Coaches’ Clinic is for school and club coaches who want to improve their skills through interaction with the college coaches. There will be classroom instruction, hands-on direction from the clinic staff, and interaction with the college coaches.

There will also be an Umpires’ Clinic led by a nationally ranked field hockey umpire designed to train, encourage, and inform area field hockey umpires. Participants will receive active umpiring practice in addition to updates on procedure and practice.

The Houston GGF Clinic Committee will set up the framework of the weekend clinic by overseeing registration, welcoming the players, providing lunch, etc. They will work with the Kinkaid athletic staff to organize the venue. The committee is made up of parents of current and former field hockey players from Kinkaid and St Johns schools. The 2014 GGF Committee Chair is Kara Mings. Her committee includes: Jana Wells, Kathy Harrison, Anita Gaylor, Eva Martire, Pam Fullenweider, Judy McCartney, Stacey Manela, Karen Thurman, Melissa Eggleston, Jim Johnson, Jill Deutser, Mary Dyer, Cynthia Franklin, Mary North, BettiTiner.