Sweet Briar’s varsity field hockey team took care of the first order of business during its Homecoming 2008 game on Sept. 27, beating Hood College 5-1.

Jennifer Crispen, watching from the hill overlooking Boathouse Road Athletic Field, liked what she saw. “I enjoyed the game because it was the first time I had seen the team play this fall,” she said later. “I recruited this group and it was fun to see what an impact they are making.”

When the clock ran out, none of the spectators left the sidelines. In the crowd were several of the College’s senior staff, coaches, faculty, staff and many former Vixens who’d come for Homecoming Weekend. They’d come for another reason, too: To honor Crispen for more than 30 years as a field hockey and lacrosse coach at Sweet Briar.

In a ceremony led by her longtime colleague, Sweet Briar athletic director Kelly Morrison, the 18 hockey players formed a single line on the field facing the audience. Each held a strip of paper from which they read one of Crispen’s professional accomplishments in her 39 years of involvement in collegiate and women’s sports.

The 2004 inductee into the National Field Hockey Coaches Association Hall of Fame is ranked sixth in the country for her coaching record. Four times – in 1985, 1992, 1995 and 2000 – her peers in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference named her Coach of the Year. In 2002, Crispen coached her 500th game, posted her 270th win and Sweet Briar won the Virginia Women’s College Championship for the seventh year.

While chair of the U.S. Coaching Committee, she was responsible for the first U.S. Coaching Certification Program. In 1984 and 1996, Crispen worked at the Olympic Games as a media consultant in field hockey. And as a player, she was a member of the U.S. Squad, and played against Germany, Wales, Canada, Holland and England.

The list included some of her contributions on Sweet Briar’s faculty – including two consecutive terms as chair of the faculty senate. Dean Jonathan Green, who was one of several people to follow the students at the microphone, noted that in the College’s history, no one has ever been elected for back-to-back terms as chair. It confirms the impression she has made on her peers across the faculty, he said.

“Jennifer has been probably the best role model for all of us to understand the importance that coaches have on [students’] learning … about leadership, about how sports shapes their lives,” Green said.

Hillary London, who coaches the 2008 hockey squad, spoke after the team members. She recalled meeting Crispen four years before she applied to coach at Sweet Briar.

“I instantly remembered this woman, and then I did a little bit of research on her and I found out all of these facts, because if you Google Jennifer you get a lot of hits,” London said. “You also get hits about her art and the work that she’s done for cancer awareness and the stuff that she’s done for her athletes over the decades.”

London was rubbing in their age difference, but became serious. “I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for bringing me here because you recruited me just like you recruited these kids and all those up there on the mountain,” she said, indicating the alumnae on the hill.

London opened the floor to anyone with Crispen stories they wanted to share. Katie Hearn ’85 trotted barefoot through the rain-soaked grass to the mike and declared that she and her classmates couldn’t come up with any tales they could repeat in public.

But, she recalled, Crispen really likes pigs and so to honor their friend and mentor for 30 years of coaching, they would donate one through Heifer International. The charitable organization helps impoverished communities become more self-sufficient with the gift of farm animals.

Alice Dixon ’82 had plenty of stories to tell, including one about Crispen’s quick action after she took a blow to the head in a game.

“ … The next thing I hear, she said, ‘Oh my God, her mother’s coming on to the field,’ ” Dixon recalled. “And I guess she wanted to save my pride, because the next thing I feel is she has her hand gripped in my kilt waistband and is lifting me to my feet and walking me off the field.

“I think she knew that having my mother kiss my boo-boo on the field was probably not what I wanted to have happen right then.”

A longtime friend, Lynchburg College field hockey coach Enza Steele, told how Crispen took her on recruiting trips her first year at LC. Once, when she was just 26 years old, her mentor suckered her into pretending to be 30 so she could play in a seniors division game at an annual field hockey festival in Florida.

Steele, figuring she could handle the over-30 crowd, said what she didn’t grasp was Crispen’s feistiness on the field. “The nice person that showed me how to recruit and baked bread before we went out on our road trips and she’d turn around and go ‘Enza, get that damn ball, I just hit it really hard to you.’ ”

Steele couldn’t chase down her friend’s blistering-fast passes, but she says it made her even more competitive than she already was. “So to that, I say thank you for all the road trips we had, all the late-night phone calls. I think they’ve made me successful and I thank you so much,” she told Crispen.

President Elisabeth Muhlenfeld offered some final remarks. At least two things about Crispen stand out for her, she said. One, having her finger on the pulse of the student body, she has always helped bridge the distance between students, faculty and administration.

The second is her artwork. An avid watercolorist, Crispen’s paintings of Sweet Briar scenes and buildings have been made into Christmas cards and prints and given to countless people over the years. “When people think about Sweet Briar they’re going to see it very much through those eyes and I think that’s very fitting,” Muhlenfeld said.