"she was not the right fit for me."

"Being part of Florida State’s new lacrosse program was supposed to feel exciting. We were told we were building something special from the ground up, creating a culture, and becoming the foundation for what this program would eventually be. That is a huge part of why I wanted to be here. But being inside the program feels very different from what was sold during recruiting. The environment often feels driven by fear, favoritism, and constantly trying not to end up on the wrong side of the coaching staff. How you are treated can feel heavily dependent on whether you are a favorite, getting meaningful playing time, traveling, injured, or considered useful at that moment. It makes it difficult to ever feel secure in your role or comfortable speaking honestly. The hardest part is feeling like we are expected to be athletes first and people second. Personal problems, mental health struggles, injuries, and things happening outside of lacrosse do not always feel like they are met with empathy. There is an overwhelming pressure to keep performing and not let anything affect you. Eventually, that starts changing how you feel about yourself and about a sport you used to love. Communication can feel inconsistent, and raising a concern does not always feel safe. There is a sense that speaking up could make your situation worse instead of fixing anything, so people learn to stay quiet. Even activities described as “voluntary” do not always feel genuinely optional, and the overall demands can make lacrosse feel like it controls nearly every part of your life. What has become especially difficult for me is realizing that these complaints did not begin at Florida State. Once I started questioning my own experience, I looked into what athletes and former athletes who say they played for Coach Tisdale at her previous programs had written. Some of it was genuinely disturbing because so many of the themes felt familiar. One former athlete alleged that after disclosing they had been sexually assaulted, Tisdale told them they “shouldn’t let things happening off the field affect me on the field.” Other athletes and former athletes have alleged NCAA practice-hour violations or that supposedly voluntary activities were effectively mandatory. They have described body-shaming, humiliation, punishment-based conditioning, favoritism, fear of retaliation, and injured players being treated as disposable. One former athlete alleged that an injured player on crutches was still expected to retrieve a bucket of balls. Another described extreme military-style training and alleged that a player sustained a concussion. Another alleged that after deciding to transfer, Tisdale went from promising to help with the process to speaking negatively about that athlete to other coaches. No anonymous account proves that every allegation happened exactly as described. But sitting inside this program now and then reading athletes from completely different years and schools describing many of the same dynamics is difficult to ignore. These allegations go far beyond people complaining that practice was too hard or that they did not play enough. If even some are accurate, they raise serious questions about athlete welfare, NCAA compliance, university oversight, injury management, retaliation, and whether athletes actually feel safe bringing concerns to someone with enormous control over their careers. That is probably what bothers me the most. From the outside, everything can look exciting and successful. Recruiting looks great. The program is new. Everyone talks about culture and building something special. Meanwhile, athletes who have negative experiences can transfer, graduate, stay anonymous because they are afraid of consequences, or simply be dismissed as bitter. Division I athletics are supposed to be demanding. We know what we signed up for. We expect hard practices, criticism, conditioning, competition, and sometimes sitting on the bench. That is not the issue. The issue is when athletes feel afraid of their coach instead of simply challenged by her. It is when injured players feel like inconveniences. It is when speaking honestly feels dangerous. It is when “optional” does not actually feel optional. And it is especially concerning when former athletes from previous programs are describing the same kinds of experiences years later. During recruiting, none of this is obvious. Coach Tisdale can be extremely convincing when talking about culture, family, opportunity, and being part of something historic at Florida State. I understand why recruits believe it. I did too. There are talented players and genuinely good people here, and this is not criticism of them. I also know that not every athlete will have the same experience, and some may genuinely love playing for her. But if you are considering coming to FSU to play for Coach Tisdale, do not only talk to the players the coaching staff chooses for you. Privately contact athletes who transferred, were injured, redshirted, rarely played, or decided the program was not for them. Ask what happens when you are struggling. Ask what happens when you are injured. Ask whether “optional” really means optional. Ask whether players feel comfortable disagreeing with her. Ask what happens when you want to transfer. And most importantly, ask why athletes across multiple programs have felt strongly enough to describe such similar experiences once they were no longer under her control. I wish I had asked those questions before I got here."

"I would never recommend FSU lacrosse to anyone. Sara Tisdale is so underqualified to not only be the coach at an ACC school that values women’s sports, but she should not be in charge of coaching young women. She would tell girls she wants to “punch them in the face” and that “I would’ve taken her behind the bleachers and beat her up”. There is a full video on ESPN of her hitting a player on the team going into a timeout. She lacks empathy and flaunts that she “scored a 0 on an empathy test”. She forces the team to be present in the summer but puts on a facade to the media that “the team voluntarily chose to be here” - even though the school and the program isn’t paying for anyone to be there (not even classes) and it’s on your own dime (about $3-$5K). You would think that you are getting an overall student-athlete experience at Florida State, but you won’t. There were 2 weekends off the entire fall, and when you did have off, you were not allowed to leave campus. She wouldn’t let girls leave until Halloween weekend, only because she was missing a few practices to go on vacation. There were so many girls hurt this fall because of the coach's failure of load management that she split the team into A and B practice times, but would only attend the A group's practice. Sara Tisdale creates such a competitive environment that is so toxic to team culture. Players labeled as “travelers” vs. “non-travelers”, “High minute” vs. “Low minute”, “Group A” vs. “Group B”. For individual sessions, some freshmen were left out of the invite-only group chats and were told they had to “earn” individual time. If a player is in a position where they need to get better, wouldn’t having extra reps with the coach be a great solution? How is a player supposed to earn individuals without even being allowed to show what they can do? During practices, even in small drills, Sara Tisdale would hand-pick groups to go in, leaving some girls to only touch the ball like 5 times a practice. When injured players joined the huddle to learn and be coached, they were screamed at to go back to the sidelines. Girls were expected to know every part of the scout like the back of their hands, even if it did not apply to their position. Being cold-called in meetings at 7 am, and being quizzed on the material. One time we were given a film assignment that took everyone 3-4 hours each. It was assigned at 11am and was due at 9pm on a Sunday. Sundays are the days to catch up on homework and generally the only free time we were given. Sara Tisdale creates such a fear-driven environment. She praised her few favorites constantly. Every action players take is out of fear of making her angry, instead of striving to make her proud. Nobody on the field could say they were playing for this coach. She micromanages every girl on the team but claims the team is “player-led”. She constantly goes over hours and breaks many NCAA compliance rules. No individuals are counted towards hours, no individual film sessions with coaches are counted towards hours, no meetings are counted towards hours, and compliance does nothing about it. If you do not show up to something voluntary, you will be punished. Anytime anything was reported to someone higher up, nothing happened. Girls are scared to speak up and live in a state of fear. Mental and verbal abuse is present on this team and every time a girl reached out to the sports psych, they never would hear back. Tisdale would attempt to uncover information from some confidential meetings with the therapist, who kept things strictly private. Many girls developed severe anxiety and panic attacks after being associated with this program for the past year. She treats the other coaches and support staff like trash and doesn’t care about the weight of her words or actions. She is now known in the ACC for being not only crazy, but a horrible coach among other programs. She makes her assistants travel and recruit while she stays at home. She makes her staff ride the team bus while she rides or travels separately. Word travels fast, especially when she cusses out the box/score worker at Pitt on Easter mid-game. She constantly discredited her coaching staff and contradicted their coaching advice whenever they said something. Same with captains' and upperclassmen's advice. She constantly begged for more player leadership, yet would put someone down in front of the whole team if they actually took some initiative. She is a saleswoman and manipulates every conversation. She cares for no one and puts on a façade in front of donors and athletic directors. She has cut multiple girls after this year because she is bringing in 16 freshmen and transfers as a first year program to manipulate them to do whatever she wants. She constantly talks about how girls that SHE recruited are not ACC caliber players, yet she is not an ACC caliber coach. She talks about other players behind their backs to other girls in private meetings and wants to know everything. I believe the program should not reconsider her position, and I would never recommend anyone to play for her. This is a shame that FSU could've been a top-tier program but the opportunity is ruined because of a coach they brought on (because of past relationships with the FSU AD). Such an awesome school can easily be ruined by being around this woman for way too many hours, which it unavoidable with the schedule. Believe every review on this page. They are all true."

"body shames, targets players against each other, uses players mental health against them, violates NCAA guidelines multiple times. These are just a few reasons on why tisdale is so awful. the thought of her makes me want to throw up. i am so sorry to those who decide they are gonna play for her. you will regret it."

"I don’t think there are words to describe all of the horrible things Tisdale did in her two years I spent at EMU. Please do not be fooled by the facade she puts on during the recruiting process, she is a truly horrible person. To list a few things, Tisdale violated NCAA hour limits, forced us to do military training, had unrealistic run tests, enforced a pregame curfew, and constantly belittled teammates during film and meetings. She encouraged people to talk trash others in 1 on 1 meetings and created a tattle tale culture within the team, breaking trust between teammates. She also wanted you to directly rank yourself compared to teammates, which creates an absolutely horrible atmosphere. She is very power hungry and loves putting people down to instill fear and make herself feel superior. I found myself in a constant state of anxiety throughout my two years, making me dread going to any lacrosse event. During breaks I spent at home, I would be absolutely miserable even thinking about having to go back to school. On the field, she had obvious favorites that she made sure everyone knew, creating a strict favorite/non favorite divide. Days following games, “high mileage” players would talk and roll out and watch everyone else did a full conditioning, further adding to this divide. When you were a favorite, you were brainwashed to thinking she was a good coach/person, almost feeling like things were getting better. Suddenly, she would drop you and go back to the constant verbal slander. She told me I was going to start and get good playtime for the season and then proceeded to play me a total of 10 minutes in the first two preseason games without explanation, even when I directly asked for clarity. She still purposely found your weaknesses and dug into them, making you feel like you have no worth. Meetings I scheduled to try to find what I needed to improve turned into her picking apart every negative thing about me and repeatedly saying that I will never be as good as my teammates. She constantly told me that I did not deserve to be a division one athlete and would make fun of my weaknesses. She once screamed in my face on the sideline after a mistake I made and said that I was so f-ing awful at catching, throwing, and cutting that if the other team scored it would be all of my f-ing fault (We were up by 10 goals at this point). One of Tisdale's worst qualities are her CONSTANT lies. She once told us that people with the best stats after a week of practice would play in the next game. When the time came around, she disregarded this statement and resorted to only playing her typical lineup, with people who preformed well in practice not even touching the field. When asked about it, she gaslight you into thinking that she never said that and blamed you for not being good enough. At the end of my second year, I knew I had no other option for my mental health but to leave. She claims that if you decide transfer, she will always help you and "be in your corner". In reality, she talks negatively about you to any coach that reaches out to her in order to decrease your chances actually getting somewhere else. She specifically told me she would assist me in my transfer process, but immediately said she did not want to help when I asked her one week later. I do not regret spending two years at EMU because of the wonderful people I met, but I still am recovering from Tisdale to this day. I constantly find her voice still in my head during practice and have had to relearn to love myself as a lacrosse player. I never realized how truly awful she was as a person/coach until I shared my experiences with others and they did not believe me. All I have to say is I pray for anyone who plays under Tisdale in the future and I advise you to get a therapist. Trust me, you’ll need it. "

"Coach Tisdale is a coach who knows very little ab out playing the sport of lacrosse and coaches through fear. She wants her players to be afraid of her and is a bully on the field to players and officials. She also lies to and manipulates players in order to get them to do what she wants. She talks about player's private information to the team and pulls people into her office and asks them to gossip to her about teammates. She also encourages professionals to violate HIPPA in order to have power over her players and use personal medical information against them. She also treats injured people like their only purpose is to serve her every want and need during practice. Outside of practice, they are non existent and do not matter. She is very unfriendly to parents and family and will often allow very little time for team to see family members after games. She also picks special players who can do no wrong and have power over their teammates. If you aren't in her special group would will not play, you will not matter, and you will be forgotten. She also uses conditioning as a punishment and often overworks her players, giving them very little time to recover. In addition to this, she consistently violates the NCAA 20 hour per week rule. Although Tisdale says school and family come before lacrosse, that is not true. She wants to have control of her players lives on and off the field and will throw a rage tantrum if she is not able to do this. Overall, Tisdale creates a tea, culture where no one can trust each other, her team is miserable, and everyone is just praying for the season to end. The amount of players that graduate early or are on the track to do so just to get away from her should speak volumes. Not to mention she forced her team to fight a 300 pound marine at 4 in the morning while sounds of gunshots, women screaming, and babies crying played on the speaker (this was called the house of pain, one player fought the marine while others on the outside of the circle did grueling exercises). While one group was fighting him, the other was doing 100 yard bear crawls. For 3 hours. All after the night before the team was forced to do marine training for four hours (army crawling with chains, ropes, etc) until it got so dark out they could not continue. Fighting the marine was so intense, one player suffered a concussion and was out for 6 weeks. All while we were doing this, she sat back and laughed at her players who were visibly in pain. All in all, she was toxic at Central Michigan, toxic at Eastern Michigan, and will probably continue to be at Florida State. Good luck to anyone who plays for her in the future! "

"A coach who utilizes fear as a method of control and chips away at player’s confidence. This is a coach who will make you lose the love of a sport you have dedicated your entire life to. She is manipulative and attempts to turn teammates against one another. She attempts to establish weird dynamics of “control” and “leaders” between friends but in reality she puts one or a few on a pedestal in order to get them to talk about other players and learn things about their personal life that they did not share with her. During meetings with players, she will often ask about other players, which essentially creates a gossiping culture on the team. To my knowledge there have been meetings with people who are not captains specifically to talk about other players and situations. In her two years at this school, she created an extremely negative culture so much so that it was not even fun to be apart of a team. On the field, she will randomly ice players out, taking them out of the game completely with little to no explanation. As mentioned before, she wanted everyone to be afraid of her, but unfortunately that mentality off the field transpired directly on to the field and she had almost an entire team that was afraid of making her angry and played timid. The mind games she plays with her team cause many of her players to lose their love for the sport and become a shell of the player they once were. One last comment about Tisdale is that she consistently finds creative ways to violate the 20hour rule by labeling many things as “optional” even though girls would get in a lot of trouble for not attending. This got to the point to where even when things were truly optional, girls were scared to leave the field because they were afraid of getting benched or in trouble. There is a difference between tough love and just being downright awful and many times this experience with her was just downright awful. "

"You will need loads of therapy after you are done playing for Tisdale. She is a manipulator to say the least. Her coaching tactics are based on fear. She could care less about the mental wellbeing of her team. It shows when players are not ok and she doesn’t reach out or help. If anything you will get a text that says “how are you” and that’s it. The only good thing about her is that she loves food. On away trips she splurges and gets the team good meals but that’s if you are allowed to travel. She leaves behind her injured players even after saying that they are just apart of the team as the people who play. Once you are on injury good luck because she forgot about you. You are just there to make sure her practice runs smoothly. And if it doesn’t she will yell at you in front of the team and make fun of you. Awful coach who only has a decent track record because of her assistant coaches. Not to mention that her and her staff are mean girls who always want to hear the gossip. She talks about other players in your one on one meetings. This provides a lack of team culture because teammates can’t trust each other. She has no empathy yet she gives this speech at the beginning of the year about how “your daughters are apart of my family now and I will hold their hand and help them with anything.” That’s all a lie. Your dreams of playing lacrosse will go down the drain after playing for her. She talks about a standard and how the team has it yet she can’t uphold the standard on her part. Tisdale runs late to meetings that I have set up to have and just laughs it off. She is constantly yelling at the refs making a fool of herself. I didn’t realize how bad she was until I heard my friends stories about how great their coaches were. When I asked my friends if they had a curfew or a diet that they had to stick by, they laughed at me because they thought I was joking. Nope… that’s right she body shames and brainwashes her players into thinking this is ok. Tisdale only gets her jobs because she knows the people hiring. When she went to Eastern, only one CMU player followed her. This shows the lack of respect she has from her past players. This also speaks volumes about her. She tells the team that she can’t wait to get an invite from us for our weddings and then proceeds to look at me and say well that’s if you can ever find someone. She humiliates people if front of the team. When I heard she was leaving Eastern I was so thankful because I knew I could stay and be happy. If she didn’t leave I would have left after fall. If I were you I would save your mental health and stay far away from the woman. "

"If you are injured, you are forgotten and taken advantage of. When injured your job is to run practice with the clock and set up drills. But if you didn’t set up a drill quick enough (because you are injured) she will yell at you in front of the team. She asked someone who was on crutches to crutch all the way to the other end and bring her a full ball bucket. 1) how is that ok and 2) how are they going to carry it with crutches. That is a prime example on how little she cares about the well being of her team. She does not hesitate to belittle players in front of team and to make it worse she laughs because she thinks it’s funny. If you love the sport you won’t after she coaches you, I promise you that. I shows in the amount of players who try to graduate early, quit, entered the transfer portal, decided they were done with lacrosse or left mid season. She doesn’t take injured players on away trips but makes them lift with the strength coach instead. Not to mention even if you are injured and you are playing in your hometown she won’t take them. It sadly happened to two teammates this year. I used to like her but then realized she brain washes her players. She loves the people who kiss up to her and she pins her own players against each other. This started a lot of problems within the team. She has a set core players that play and then makes the bench players feel awful because she could care less about them. Tisdale doesn’t sub and if she does the bench player has one chance to impress her and if not they are pulled right away. She plays mind games with players and ruins their confidence. The culture that she creates is back stabbing and then wonders why there is lack of team chemistry. The freshman feel out of place and feel isolated within their own team. She mentally drains you and makes fun of players in front of the team. Tisdale goes over cara hours and then claims that it was optional. She puts restrictions on what you eat and body shames us. And she would make us run as punishment at practice even though that is against NCAA guidelines. She uses fear so that it wouldn’t get out. People aka “high mileage players” would not want to speak up because they liked the idea of playing. I would consider the habits from Tisdale to be abusive. I want to say good luck to those who try to stick it out under her dictatorship. If I were you, I would stay far away from her and never recommend anyone playing for her. "

""Coach" Tisdale is a complete fraud. She has little to no lacrosse knowledge and was a failed athlete who somehow got into coaching, with no relatability to her players. As a player for her, she was a bully. I watched her belittle and degrade everyone around her which made me question my love for the game. She creates a negative environment where punishes players if they do not meet a certain standard in an inhumane way. I never felt seen as a person while playing for her, and I was a big contributor. She takes credit for her assistant coaches knowledge and work when she is clueless. How do these things add up to being a D1 head coach? Let her players speak up on their experience as a testament to who this person really is."

"Beleive the bad reviews. There is a reason that so many of her Eastern Michigan players went into the transfer portal or graduated early. It also says a lot that only one of her CMU players followed her from Central Michigan to Eastern Michigan. Favors specific players and does not substitute them even when they are not performing well, exhausted, or hurt (or all of the above). Does not develop players. You will not improve if you play for her but instead you will question your every decision. Throws things. Yells. Makes fun of players. Is unkind. Sows fear. Says inappropriate things. Yells at the refs. None of this comes across when she is recruiting you because she can be extremely charming. Unbelievable that Florida State hired her. There is likely nothing I can say to convince you not to play for her but I wish someone had given my daughter some insight before she went to EMU."

"Coach Tisdale is a terrible coach who says one thing and does another. She has no empathy and her knowledge of how to actually coach is weak. "

"Tisdale is a terrible coach. Beyond being charming during the recruiting process she has absolutely no knowledge about how to build and retain a successful team culture. She explicitly told me I “shouldn’t let things happening off the field affect me on the field” after I was SAd. I will never forget that, and I will never forget what a horrible person she is. "

"Blatant NCAA violator and creative in her coverup, Tisdale is where college lacrosse dreams go to die. "

"Tisdale is a solid recruiter. She has experience starting programs and creating buy-in and can be successful as she builds from new. This is where the competence ends. Leadership style - zero empathy and understanding of how team chemistry works. This leads to using fear and cold shoulder approach to feedback. Does not know how to provide instruction or support during 1:1 meetings. Tries to bully officials during games. Since she is unable to empathize with others, employs a strategy of 'empowering' senior classes to inherit her negative coaching style as enforcers on the practice and game field. She then let's these senior leaders dictate who plays, which causes division and poor team chemistry. All her players dislike her until they are seniors when they are brainwashed in the ways of poor leadershio and ruling by fear. Violated NCAA practice hours at times. Inappropriate behavior as a leader of women: Proudly displayed a disdain for most males, Often at odds and caused conflict with male coaches of other sports. Inappropriate relationships and behaviors on display in front of the team, especially when traveling. After quitting on the team and resigning, instead of facing the feedback and correcting the hole she dug, she contacted and tried to poach many players from the team (only 1 out of the many followed to her new destination - which speaks for itself). Good luck. We hope she learns what matters and changes as a person and leader. Until then really do your research... "