NEWPORT — Deep down, Shannon Martin always had the itch to coach field hockey again. She just didn’t expect the opportunity to come up so suddenly.
Kaitlynn Porter had coached at Newport High last season before taking a teaching job at Kearsarge High this fall. Initially, Porter still planned to coach the Tigers and make the half-hour commute for practices and games, but once Kearsarge offered her a chance to coach the junior varsity team there, the Newport administration encouraged her to take the more-convenient role.
Mere weeks before the start of the 2022 season, the Tigers were without a head coach. So Martin, Newport’s sixth-year principal who had coached the team from 2008-14 while teaching science at the school, decided to take the job herself.
“The first person that came to mind was Shannon, because I had jokingly mentioned it to her the year before,” Newport athletic director Jeff Miller said. “I could tell that she really wanted to coach again, so I just took a chance and said something to her. She thought about it and worked it out, and it didn’t take her long to decide she wanted to do it. It worked out great for us and for the girls.”
Martin was once a rival of her current employer — the 2001 Stevens High graduate played goalkeeper for the Cardinals and was offered a spot on the University of New Hampshire’s roster. After graduating from UNH, where she played club field hockey, Martin returned to the Upper Valley to earn her teaching certificate, interning at Newport as a student-teacher and spending three years as an assistant coach at Lebanon High.
Newport gave Martin her first full-time teaching position in 2007 and her first head coaching opportunity a year later, when she took over for Steve Christensen. She left in 2014 to become the principal at now-defunct Black River High in Ludlow, Vt., then returned in 2017 as Newport’s principal. And now, she’s coaching again for the first time since departing Newport eight years ago.
“I don’t know of another high school principal that’s been a coach. There’s a lot of time conflicts there,” Martin said. “It’s a sport I love. I loved coaching, I missed teaching, so it’s a chance for me to get back and work with girls in a way I hadn’t done before and see parents in a way I don’t normally anymore.”
Miller, Newport’s athletic director since 2015, had long been nagging Martin to get back into coaching — “he relentlessly pursued me,” as Martin put it — and new superintendent Donna Magoon was on board without hesitation. The only game Martin expects to miss, ironically, is a home game, when she will be attending a family wedding in Virginia.
So far, she’s been making the dual arrangement work quite nicely, at least on the field. The Tigers, who were a combined 8-19-1 the last two years, have won five of their first six games, outscoring opponents 31-9 in the process. That includes a 5-0 beatdown on Aug. 29 of Martin’s alma mater, Stevens, which defeated Newport in the first round of the playoffs last season.
“I definitely had high hopes,” senior Maddy Norris said. “We had a lot of good games last year; there were just a few things that held us back. The way we started, it kind of shocked me, but it was very exciting.”
Taylor Fellows burst onto the scene last year as a freshman with a team-best 12 goals, including a trio of hat tricks. She’s off to an even better start this year, with three goals in the win over Stevens, two more in a 2-1 victory over St. Thomas and another two in a win Monday against Mascenic.
Fellows is just the headliner of a strong sophomore class that also includes Maddox Lovely, Nevaeh Caron and Peyton Blackinton. They’ve all benefited from Martin changing the Tigers’ formation to a 3-2-3-2 that better emphasizes Newport’s speed on the offensive end.
“It’s worked a lot better. It focuses on filling people’s spots,” Fellows said. “If the ball gets by them, someone’s there. The old (formation) focused more on the defensive side of things, having more people back for defense, and our new one focuses on keeping the ball to the other side and trying to score.”
The Tigers have never played in a state championship game and made their last final four during Martin’s previous tenure, but the sophomore core gives Newport three chances to break through. With a young — albeit experienced — team, Martin has emphasized the basics and fundamentals, along with team-wide conditioning drills.
As daunting as balancing leading the Tigers with leading the entire school seemed to Martin, she knew how little time Newport had to fill the opening. High school coaches have often been hard to find in the Upper Valley in recent years, especially in smaller communities like Newport and in sports like field hockey that not everyone is familiar with, so Martin’s experience made her the best fit, even if her time is stretched thin.
“I didn’t know how I would do it, time-wise, because being a principal, everybody needs something all of the time,” Martin said.
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could do both justice, and I was very nervous about that. I’m still nervous about it. But the girls have been really gracious with me, and I’m fortunate to have a team around me that makes this possible.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.