How a pair of coaches at Cardinal Gibbons High share a unique bond with their daughters

Earlier in her coaching tenure at Cardinal Gibbons, cheerleading coach Jennifer Marks kept her watchful eyes on an infant girl sitting on one of her athletes’ lap during workouts in the school’s stadium.

Likewise, Patricia Alexander looked intently for a third-grader to make her way to the other side of the field to join Cardinal Gibbons’ girls’ lacrosse players for a postgame cooldown.

Marks, the Crusaders’ longest tenured female coach at more than 25 years, and Alexander, in her 10th season at the Edwards Mill Road school, are coaching rarities. Both women have led their respective teams to enough state championships that they need two hands to wear rings representing each title win. Marks and Alexander were each named 2022-23 National Federation of State High School Associations national coaches of the year for their respective sports.

Marks has won two state titles with the infant girl — now her 11th-grade daughter, Ava, by her side. Alexander has done the same with that third grader, now her 12th-grade daughter, Taylor, who will next year play lacrosse at Marquette. Both women have achieved the unlikeliest feat of coaching their daughters on the same campus where they grew up around their mothers’ successful programs.

“If I didn’t have that maternal instinct with all of (the players), then I don’t think I would be the same coach,” Jennifer said. ”It’s everything in how I do my day-to-day job coaching.”

Marks (a mother of five) and Alexander (who has a son, too) hold fast to memories of drives among home, school, and practice with their eldest children, all the while knowing those opportunities are dwindling. Those highway rides offer natural boundaries, both separating and uniting the journeys of mothers and daughters whose shared experiences have yielded new learning through which their relationships thrive.

“It has just strengthened Taylor in understanding what it takes to be successful, and how you treat people, to find a connection with them,” Luther Alexander, husband and father, said. “Because with that connection of appreciation and love for one another, you create magical moments on the field.”

Luther admitted how amusing it is to hear Taylor speak of her lacrosse “coach,” also her mom.

Student becomes a teacher

Word choices aside, in a unique way, that became a problem for Patricia.

“I didn’t know how to talk to her as an athlete on the field,” Patricia admitted. “I recognized that I did not give her as many compliments as I gave others.”

Patricia recalled her end-of-season meeting with then-ninth-grader Taylor. “Patricia the coach” asked “Taylor the athlete” how they could move forward with communication in sport.

“She was very clear,” Patricia said, and added, “(Taylor said), ’I don’t want to be yelled at. I want to be told what to do, and then, a step or two to do it.’”

The following season, during a challenging game for her daughter, “Patricia the coach” changed her tactics, and was more like “Patricia the mom.” Remembering how Taylor responds to instruction, she restrained herself from a terse verbal exchange in favor of another strategy.

“Just come off the field and talk to one of your coaches,” Patricia said to Taylor.

That 2022 Cardinal Gibbons team went on to win the N.C. 4A state championship. Taylor now is a team captain for the Crusaders, who are vying for a third consecutive title, and wears the No. 31 jersey Patricia wore as an athlete at Loyola (Maryland).

Mutual respect

Jennifer Marks employs the same practice strategies to prepare her girls for each competitive moment. With preparation done, and the forthcoming presentation out of her hands, this coach affords a special moment for another essential relationship dynamic to shine. She always gives Ava a hug and kiss before each routine.

“It makes me feel good, and I know she’s there — to watch,” Ava Marks said.

Ava, now a team captain, has watched another integral component of her mother’s program since her earliest days that continues today.

“We pray after practice,” Ava said. “We pray before we compete.”

Practices, competitions, and all those car rides have offered another unique challenge about which husband and father Taylor Marks quipped lovingly.

“That’s time I don’t get to spend with Ava,” Taylor Marks said. “There’s not that much that we bond over.

“At the end of the day, it is a job, but it’s a job Jennifer loves to do,” Taylor Marks continued. “Ava appreciates more now all that goes into being a coach.”

Neither tandem knows yet how their final high school journeys will end. Taylor Alexander promised one thing for however many more times she will don the familial No. 31, though:

“I always see that as my mom’s number on my back,” Taylor Alexander said. “I want to make sure I give that number the respect that it deserves.”

There, too, is self-respect, of which coach Jennifer reminds her athletes — and Ava, her daughter — and mothers and daughters, coaches and athletes everywhere.

This prevailing reality transcends any final score, or car ride home:

“I’m still going on tomorrow as a really good person,” Jennifer said. “This one day doesn’t define me.”