You’re forgiven if you don’t know the name Sue Butz-Stavin, but you should, because what she has accomplished in her 46 years as girls field hockey coach at Emmaus High School is off the charts. Compared to her achievements, others who coach this sport can only aspire to this jaw-dropping level of greatness. Her teams have won an astounding 90 percent of their games - 1,016-82-35.

A confession: I’ve never been able to get into the excitement of field hockey, even though several of my granddaughters played the sport. Attending Summit Hill High School as a teenager in the 1950s, we had the four traditional sports - football, basketball, track and baseball. Pre-Title 9, there were no girls sports in the Panther Valley that I can recall except for basketball, and, back then, the girls’ rules were far different from what they are today. I was never much aware of girls field hockey until I went away to college. In the intervening 65 years, the sport has exploded in popularity.

At Emmaus High School, thanks to Butz-Stavin, 68, the sport has become almost religion-like with the feisty, no-nonsense coach as its messiah and guru. Girls aspire to play for her, even go through hell to excel in the elite program.

Don’t get me wrong. Emmaus has other successful sports programs, but when the high school trophy case is bursting at the seams with countless pieces of hardware brought home by her teams, it’s hard to try to think of girls field hockey as just another extracurricular activity at the school.

So, let’s take a look at her credentials to determine whether this reverential treatment is warranted. First of all, the Green Hornets (28-0) won the state 3-A championship in November 2021, defeating Central Dauphin (23-1-1) by a 1-0 score. This was the team’s second consecutive state title, its 14th overall, far more than any other program in the state. Along the way, Emmaus has won 38 East Penn League championships and 33 consecutive District 11 championships, its 36th overall. The only phrase that comes to mind is “otherworldly, complete domination.”

With a student population of 2,550, Emmaus, part of the East Penn School District, is somewhere in the middle in terms of enrollment. The team was ranked #1 statewide in its classification (3-A), #2 overall when mixed in with all teams in the state and #5 nationally among the more than 1,700 girls field hockey teams.

Butz-Stavin’s team notched her 1,000th win in a 12-0 rout against East Stroudsburg North in October 2021. Her team members tried to chase her down to douse her with Gatorade to commemorate the accomplishment, but Butz-Stavin eluded the determined horde, joking that she is still the fastest person on the field.

The Sue Butz-Stavin story has the markings of a Horatio Alger outcome. Unable at first to find a teaching job when she graduated, this Allentown native had hoped to get a basketball coaching job since basketball was her passion, but then a teaching/field hockey coach position became available at Emmaus. She took it, admitted that she felt unqualified to coach the sport in the beginning, but she is a quick learner, and it didn’t take long for the wins to start piling up.

Along with the accolades because of her teams’ accomplishments, Butz-Stavin has begun getting significant national attention. She has been National High School Coach of the Year and Lehigh Valley Coach of the Year. She is also among the inductees into the first class of the District 11 Sports Hall of Fame.

Of course, everyone wants to know the secret to her success. If you are looking for some off-the-wall magic formula to explain it, you’re going to be searching for a long time.

Her strategy is basic: Have passion for what you do, commit totally to excellence and a goal to improve constantly, stay focused on the prize and follow the manual that she prepared that has become the bible for an ultrasuccessful program.

As the “winningest field hockey coach in America,” her success story is chronicled in the book of the same name by Heidi Bright Butler.

Butz-Stavin’s story has now been shared nationally after NBC’s Today show ran a personality profile piece on her Dec. 29, 2021. Commentator Harry Smith called her “remarkable and unstoppable.”

As an advocate of “Frassinelli’s quit while you’re at the top of your game” theory, because you have nowhere to go but down, I doubt whether Butz-Stavin cares much for such negativity, and, like the Energizer Bunny, she will keep on “going and going.”

Bruce Frassinelli

tneditor@tnonline.com