Seawolves Fans

Among the 7,127 in attendance at the 2012 NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse championship at Stony Brook’s Kenneth P. LaValle stadium were two young sisters watching in awe as Northwestern earned its seventh national title with an 8-6 win over Syracuse.

The Ohlmiller sisters, 10th-grader Kylie and eighth-grader Taryn, who would soon play together at Islip (N.Y.) High School and later Stony Brook, took in the atmosphere – the packed stands, the deafening cheers and the sight of Katrina Dowd, a Northwestern alum and Kylie’s role model for her creative style of play.

“I recruit a little differently than a lot of places,” Spallina said. “I don’t really want the finished product. I really enjoy the teaching part of the game and the evolution of an athlete. I just saw something in her. I saw a kid who was overlooked and really loved and had a passion for the game. … I told her the first time we met that she was going to be star.”

“She’s the best period on the planet, period. Case closed,” Spallina said. “I may be a little biased, but her body of work speaks for itself. She’s not a one-trick pony. The leadership of K.O. is unseen, but she gets it. She’s vested.”

With their personnel, says Spallina, championship weekend seems within reach, and according to Kylie Ohlmiller, Stony Brook has entered a new era.

“Coach Spallina says all the time we went from being the 70th ranked team in the country to now No. 2,” Kylie Ohlmiller said. “It’s all in tribute to how we worked every day.”

"We get to play as Long Island's team," Kylie Ohlmiller said. "We get to be those role models ... for the little girls on Long Island who are looking for those role models right here at home."

In 2018, Ohlmiller will continue her three-hour morning workouts with her sister, cut in line to get more reps in and meet with Spallina after every practice because “she’s in a lot of ways an assistant coach for me,” Spallina said.

“That’s a huge part of why I play the game,” Ohlmiller said. “It’s for those little girls. I might not have been a little girl when I came to watch the national championship here at Stony Brook in 2012, but I was still looking up to those girls who were out on the field. It’s amazing to have the roles reversed.”

“The Michael Jordan factor, as I always say, is that player who is really good, but can they raise the level of everyone around them?” Spallina said. “We don’t have any of the top 50 recruits in the country, so when you look at what Kylie’s done, she gives every kid that hope. … I have a fifth grade Yellow Jackets team and every single one of them think my girls walk on water and Kylie is Superwoman, so I’ve seen the immediate impact.”