Gina Lamandre Video 

Alex Malatesta McMahan Video 

Christie Welsh Video 

WAYNE, N.J. – William Paterson celebrated National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Feb. 1, honoring its current female student-athletes while also hearing from three women who made sports their post-college careers.
 
University President Kathleen Waldron kicked off the evening's panel discussion that featured three invited guests, who related their experiences as college student-athletes, shared how those experiences have impacted them following graduation, and offered advice to the Pioneers' current female student-athletes.
 
Alex Malatesta McMahan was a scholarship field hockey player at the University of Richmond, earning first-team all-Atlantic 10 Conference honors while leading the Spiders to a pair of league titles. A member of the U-19 and U-21 U.S. Junior National Teams, she completed a law degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 2013. However, Malatesta soon realized that her passion wasn't the law, but was instead field hockey, and she left her practice to establish Main Line Field Hockey Club, which now numbers 24 staff and 350 youth players. She also returned to her alma mater, leading Gywnedd Mercy Academy High School to a district title during her second year at the helm.
 
Christie Welsh was a four-time soccer all-American at Penn State University, earning the 2001 Hermann Trophy as the nation's player of the year. A member of the U.S. Women's National Team from 2000-08, she also played professionally in the U.S., France and Sweden, and served as a Division I assistant coach at St. Joseph's University and the University of Oregon. Welsh currently coaches a youth team at Match Fit Academy and the girls' varsity team at Montclair Kimberley Academy.
 
Gina Lamandre was a two-sport athlete at Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), earning softball all-America honors as a junior. Inside the circle, she recorded 45 shutouts, 79 victories, an earned-run average of 0.48 and nine no-hitters, eventually securing a spot in the TCNJ Athletic Hall of Fame. Lamandre worked as an assistant coach at the University of Massachusetts and as the first-ever head coach at the University of Maryland where she was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year following a 51-win season and NCAA Tournament bid. After 10 years spent at Maryland, she decided to pursue a career as a physician's assistant, later working as an emergency room P.A. after completing her degree. She was the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science Director of Clinical Education and currently is a faculty member at Monmouth University, and has served as professional mentor through William Paterson's Pesce Family Mentoring Institute.
 
At halftime of WP's home basketball game against Montclair State, Waldron helped to welcome members of each of the seven women's Athletics programs, who were acknowledged for their accomplishments during the last calendar year.

Now in its 31st year, National Girls and Women in Sports Day has evolved into an event to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of female athletes, and to promote the positive influence that sports participation has on women of all ages. 
 
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