She lived in the shadow of her two older sisters for years, a young lacrosse prodigy dutifully following in their illustrious footsteps.
For four years at Notre Dame Prep in Towson, Md., Coco Stanwick trod a path similar to siblings Sheehan and Wick, even playing attack just like her sisters. They eventually took their talents to Georgetown, helping the Hoyas become one of the top women’s lacrosse programs in the country. Coco, however, had other ideas.
“When I started looking at different colleges there was no way I wanted to go to Georgetown,” Coco Stanwick said. “I really just wanted a chance to do my own thing.”
Then she took an official visit to the campus and those ideas immediately fell by the wayside. Instead, Coco Stanwick chose to continue her family’s legacy at the school where her maternal grandfather, Fred Mesner, played basketball and tennis, coached men’s basketball from 1931 to 1938 and was elected to the Georgetown Athletic Hall of Fame.
The Stanwick sisters have only added to the family legacy. Sheehan, 26, graduated in 2001. She was the National Attacker of the Year that season and led the Hoyas to the NCAA final, a 14-13 double-overtime loss to Maryland. Sheehan was twice named first-team All-America and is Georgetown’s all-time leader in points (330), goals (232) and assists (98). Wick, 24, was a first-team All-America at attack in 2003 as a senior and the Big East Attacker of the Year. She is third all-time in goals (164) and points (218) for the Hoyas and helped them again reach the NCAA championship game in 2002, a 12-7 loss to Princeton.
“I didn’t always love to be constantly compared to my sisters in high school,” Coco Stanwick said. “I still wanted to be my own person. But then I started to realize how flattering that really was to have any kind of comparison made to them. I couldn’t ask for any more support than what they’ve given me.”
Now, it is Coco Stanwick’s time to shine. As a junior she leads Georgetown in goals (52), points (61) and ground balls (40) and has been named Big East Offensive Player of the Week the last three weeks. Coco Stanwick also recently shattered the NCAA record for most draw controls won in a single season (103) and is making her own mark on the Georgetown record books. She is seventh in career goals (128), fifth in assists (57) and sixth in points (185).
The Big East champion Hoyas are 12-3 and ranked No. 4 in the country with six wins against Top 20 teams. With just one regular season game left against No. 12 Johns Hopkins, Coco Stanwick’s thoughts are drifting towards the postseason, where Georgetown has made the Final Four three times in five years yet never broken through with an NCAA title. That’s lofty territory for a program that didn’t even qualify for the NCAA Tournament until 1998 when Sheehan Stanwick arrived, 21 years after its founding.
“That was a big part of why Sheehan decided to come to Georgetown in the first place,” Coco Stanwick said. “She wanted to be a part of something and help build a program. My sisters both did that. I hope we get the chance to complete what they started.”
