The Review

Issue date: 4/17/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Courtesy of UD Photo Services Bob Shillinglaw is in his 29th season as men's lacrosse coach.

In both collegiate and professional sports, it is rare for a coach to stay with one team for five years, let alone ten. Yet, men's lacrosse head coach Bob Shillinglaw is in his 29th year at the helm of the Hens.

Shillinglaw has been a lacrosse man his entire life, growing up in Annapolis, Md., and attending University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He played lacrosse for four years and was team captain his senior year in 1974. After he graduated with a degree in coaching and a background in exercise science, Shillinglaw took his passion for lacrosse straight into coaching at the collegiate level. After college he took an assistant coaching position for one year with Division III Massachusetts Maritime Academy, then served as head coach for three years before taking the head coach position at Delaware.

Shillinglaw has been a staple of Delaware lacrosse for longer than most students at the university have been alive. He is the only full-time head coach in the team's history, taking over for Jim Grube in 1979, who also was an assistant football coach.

Coaching is something Shillinglaw said he has had a passion for since he was young, and through his athletic pursuits in both high school and college he was able to focus his studies in that direction.

"I decided at an early age that I wanted to be a coach," he said. "As I progressed through high school and college I kind of had my goal set on coaching college."

Upon arriving at Delaware, Shillinglaw said the team had some successful years, but was competing closer to a Division III level. One of the first things he did was increase the level of competition within the schedule so the team would be competitive with other Division I teams.

He said funding is one of the main reasons why the program has been able to steadily increase in its competitive level from succeeding at a D-III level, to being a top-10 Division I program. The team currently has 11.5 scholarships out of a collegiate maximum of 12.6. Shillinglaw said the team had only six scholarship players just two or three years ago.

With the increased scholarships and the team being close to being fully funded, he said he hopes this will provide more stability for the program as opposed to some of the up-and-down history the team has had in the past.

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