Point Pleasant Boro’s Kelly Carr is the 2022 field hockey Coach of the Year

Point Pleasant Boro head coach Kelly Carr shows off the trophy to the Panthers after winning their first ever sectional title during the NJSIAA South Jersey, Group 3 field hockey sectional final between Point Pleasant Boro and Haddonfield at Point Pleasant Boro High School in Point Pleasant, NJ on Thursday, November 10, 2022.
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Despite having a successful high school and college career, what pushed Kelly Carr to get back into coaching was coaching her daughter.

Jordan Carr came aboard the Point Pleasant Boro program in 2016, the same year Kelly Carr took over as head coach.

After four years, her daughter was getting ready to move on to play at Northwestern but Kelly Carr didn’t feel like she could step away.

“You care about the kids,” she said. “The year after (Jordan) graduated was COVID, so she wasn’t playing in college that fall. Their season was moved to the spring. So that worked out and then every year you just see the potential in the team and I just haven’t been able to walk away from it.”

Under Carr’s guidance, Point Pleasant Boro began taking small steps toward competing at the state level.

One big step came in 2017, when it won the program’s first divisional title in 43 years.

The program took a giant leap this fall.

After putting he state on notice with a 19-game unbeaten streak to open the season, the team was brought back to earth with a loss to Shore in the Shore Conference final.

Rather than let the season snowball, Carr kept the team focused and they won four consecutive games shortly after in the state tournament to win the program’s first-ever sectional championship.

As a result, Kelly Carr has been named the 2022 NJ.com Coach of the Year.

“At some point in the fourth quarter, I think when we got up by four or five, I was like, oh my God, I really think we might do this,” she said. “And it just was surreal, like an out-of-body experience.”

When looking back at the most recent seasons, including this one, Carr has noticed a change in the quality of players that are coming into the program.

The players’ dedication to improving and building a winning culture has been gradually improving since her first day as the head coach.

“The girls committed to that right from the start,” Carr said. “They want to show up to practice, they want to work hard and get better. They don’t want to just show up on day one of preseason. So it’s all the summer training and they play together in a league over the winter. So they’ve kind of taken what used to be a ‘drop your sticks in late October and don’t look at them again until the next year’ thing and turned it into a year-round activity for the girls in our school, which has perennially been a soccer town, right? They’re kind of turning it into a place where field hockey at least has equal billing.”

Carr has played her own small part of that.

She took over a weekly summer camp and her varsity players volunteer to help coach the younger kids in town.

This year’s crop of freshmen was among the first group of kids to participate in that camp and then go through playing in middle school before arriving on varsity.

“It’s exciting, you feel like the time that we did put in is worth it,” she said. “You got them excited about playing. I love seeing kids choosing to play field hockey.” ... “It’s rewarding to see their success and then to see our middle school team continue to develop as well. The strength of that team has grown over the years. I think that the middle school team feeds off the success of the high school. They see how well we’re doing and that’s their expectation.”

The sustained success at the lower levels will only guarantee Point Pleasant Boro remains among the Shore Conference’s elite in the years to come.

It’s only a matter of time before they take that next step toward bringing in a state championship.

If Carr stays, any future state titles would add to the state title she won as a player for Shore when she was in high school.

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Brian Bobal may be reached at bbobal@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Brian on Twitter @BrianBobal and on Instagram @BrianBobalHS. Like NJ.com High School Sports on Facebook.

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