Florida State University

"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."

"Needs better recruitment "

"Team environment based on not making any mistakes, even in practice. Yet, we would get in trouble for not being offensive enough because everyone was worried about making a mistake. "

"she made me want to die everyday. can’t coach for the life of her"

"Horrible nasty woman. Knows absolutely nothing about running and her training plans reflect that. She pushes boundaries violating NCAA rules in place to protect athletes. If you’re on her bad side, good luck getting taken to races. It feels like walking on egg shells around her, you never know when she’s going to boil over with rage and you can’t predict what will set her off. She consistently displays inappropriate behavior towards coaching staff and athletes alike. She is a horrible woman who shares no values that Florida State athletics represents. DO NOT be fooled by her “coaching love bombing.” Nasty woman."