Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

It’s been over eight years since Gabby Jessup graduated from West Forsyth, but little did she know at the time that what she learned then proved to be the foundation for what she’s doing now in women’s lacrosse.

Jessup had never played girls lacrosse before attending West Forsyth, but she became good enough that she was able to play college lacrosse at Coker University in South Carolina.

“I had no idea what it was,” Jessup said. “All I knew was they wore short skirts, and I was not a fan of that.”

After five injury-plagued years at Coker, she turned her eyes to coaching. She became the interim head coach for the women’s lacrosse team at Lake Erie College, which is an NCAA Division II school in Painesville, Ohio. Jessup left Lake Erie and just finished her finished season as an assistant coach at Baldwin Wallace University, which is a Division III school in Berea, Ohio.

“I took a lot out of my coaches. Again, I grew a new appreciation for your body and the game and being able to play it at a healthy level. Being on the sidelines, as much as it was a crappy experience, it afforded me the IQ that I have now to being able to coach it, I think,” said Jessup

It all happened because she tore her ACL in both knees twice for a total of four times, including once in her right knee while playing JV basketball her freshman season at West Forsyth. The doctors told her after the fourth injury that they weren’t going to sign off on her playing, so it forced her to retire as a player.

“At one my doctors looked at me and said, ‘You can’t keep playing,'” Jessup said. “They said if you keep playing you are going to do it again and we are not signing off on you touching the field again.”

Needless to say, hearing that from her doctors was difficult.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “At this point I’d love to just pick up a lacrosse stick and play a pickup game of lacrosse because I do leagues now, and I’m not allowed to just because I run the risk of doing it (knee injury) again.”

Even though she was a player at Coker for five years, including a redshirt season, she had the option to keep playing in college

“My fifth-year senior year I had a COVID year still left to go play somewhere,” Jessup said. “And that’s when I was looking at going to Catawba and taking what would be my sixth year at that point before I tore my ACL (again).”

Much of the credit for getting into coaching was Coach Doug Brawley, the head coach at West Forsyth, who introduced her to the sport of lacrosse. Brawley, who used to be in the Winston-Salem Police Department, also knew Jessup through her father, Aaron, who served with Brawley in the WSPD.

“I ran into him after school one day coming out of basketball practice, and we hadn’t seen each other in a while,” Brawley said of Aaron Jessup. “I had already retired from the police department, and he was still working there. Friends catching up. And it just so happened that I was coming out of a lacrosse meeting and I knew what a good coach Aaron would be. And he coached basketball, other sports before, and his daughter was with him. Gabby ended up starting to play lacrosse at West Forsyth during her freshman season.

“I told Aaron, you need to come help me coach and Gabby, you need to come play for me. I think that was the first exposure either one of them ever had.”

Aaron Jessup eventually became Brawley’s assistant coach when he was hired at West Forsyth.

That’s about the time her first knee injury happened. She suffered a torn ACL during her sophomore season on the JV girls basketball team for the Titans.

She had to miss the rest of her sophomore season in basketball and all of her season in lacrosse because of the injury. She ended up quitting basketball after that season. And if that wasn’t enough, Jessup also played golf at West Forsyth, quitting before her senior season.

“I was purely just focusing on lacrosse at that point,” she said.

But the injury, even after recovery and rehab, left her with limitations in lacrosse.

“I had hand-eye coordination and growing up around basketball, my dad played basketball in college briefly,” Jessup said. “So, I kind of picked up the defensive end of it pretty well, but after tearing my ACL I focused a lot more on stick skills, and like I said, I wasn’t able to move. I lost a lot of lateral speed and overall top speed, so I actually became an offensive player.”

Even though she only played three years of lacrosse in high school she parlayed that into a scholarship at Coker.

“I expected her to play,” Brawley said. “As much as she loves the game. On days off we would meet over there and throw and catch.”

While at Coker, she tore her ACL a combined three more times in both knees, limiting her to just playing in a total of 22 games in five seasons. In the fall of her freshman year at Coker she tore the ACL in her left knee just two practices in. She once again tore the ACL in her right leg her sophomore season. She tore the ACL in her left knee another time in her fifth-year senior season at Coker in 2022. 

“At that point they wanted me on the field as bad as I wanted to be on the field,” she said. “I was a starter in about every single game that I appeared in.”

Brawley took note of how Jessup handled the injuries at Coker.

“She was taking a leadership role with her enthusiasm and her willingness to do things,” he said. “You could tell when she got injured again that you knew that she needed to be really patient and let it get healed. That was a long process for her, I know getting back on the field in college.”

Brawley saw the same thing in her as a potential coach as he had at West Forsyth when he introduced her to the sport.

“She definitely did not want to come off the field,” Brawley said. “She didn’t want to stop playing, but I think she realized at that point that if she didn’t stop playing and didn’t take care of her knees she was going to have long-term effects for the rest of her life.”

The reality had set in for Jessup at that point that there might be another pathway for her in lacrosse.

“She realized the importance of that and therefore switched over to the coaching aspect,” Brawley said.

Even though Jessup was excited about the next chapter of her lacrosse life, she had mixed reviews about her initial experience at Lake Erie.

“I had a good experience with the coach that brought me in,” Jessup said. “After that I was on my own. I got put into an interim head position because she left three months into me being there and took another job. So, I was the head coach coming fresh out of college and off injury trying to coach a bunch of girls that are the same age as me.”

With Jessup’s initial role of graduate assistant, she said she had to attend practices, help coach, travel to recruit and contact potential players and recruits. According to her, Coker and Lake Erie had some similarities.

“Same feel, same vibe,” she said. “It’s probably the same amount of students, same amount tuition-wise.”

Even with the frustration at Lake Erie there was still something gnawing at her. She had plenty of options to go pursue another career with the exercise science degree she received at Coker. 

“With my undergrad, I could’ve gone different routes,” she said. “But I think at that point, I was like, ‘I’m not ready to give this game up.'”

Jessup ended up leaving Lake Erie about a year and a half ago because they hired a new coach.

“I didn’t have a positive experience with her,” Jessup said. 

Despite her leaving Lake Erie, she took a circuitous route to get to Baldwin Wallace. 

“I was told if I was going to quit getting my master’s degree and if I was going to quit coaching at the GA (grad assistant) level then I was told to get a big-girl job,” Jessup said. “So, I did that for, I don’t know, eight or nine months.”

During that stretch she worked in a place in Ohio that specialized in physical therapy. That wasn’t to her liking.

“Sedentary, desk lifestyle is not for me,” Jessup said. 

In February of this year, Jessup received the break she was looking for. The head coach at Baldwin Wallace, Nicholle Shoger, reached out to Jessup and asked Jessup if she was interested in getting back into coaching.

“She knew I was at Lake Erie for a certain amount of time and she knew I was still in the area,” Jessup said. “I went through the whole interview process, and was like, ‘Look, I’ve been out of touch with this for a year and a half.’ I’ve been coaching club ever since I moved up here. But I hadn’t been in touch with the college part of it in a year and a half, to be frank. And it’s easy to get out of touch with that.

“Taking a break is easy to fall out of line and lose the determination that you kind of have to have as a college coach.”

At that point, Shoger did her best to become a de facto sales director for the Baldwin Wallace women’s lacrosse program.

“She sold me on the program. She sold me on the school,” Jessup said. “And I’ve always had the grit and determination to be around the game of lacrosse.”

Jessup returned to coaching this past spring, helping the Yellow Jackets to an overall record of 10-9.

“It made me fall in love with coaching, which was something that I needed,” Jessup said. “The team has a great culture, great atmosphere. The coach is awesome. And what I needed was a learning atmosphere to learn how to deal with everything that a college kid is going to throw at you. 

“And for me at 22, 23 years old when I started at Lake Erie, I was so young. I didn’t know how to deal with any of that.”

Being at Baldwin Wallace has proven to be a gold mine for Jessup.

“(It) has afforded me an opportunity to learn and kind of mature in that position,” Jessup said. 

Brawley has kept up with Jessup’s career ever since she graduated from West Forsyth. 

“She just refused to give up,” Brawley said. “And when she realized she couldn’t play the game she used that energy to transfer into another way of helping the sport grow. She’s an amazing young lady. There’s no doubt about it. She’ll be successful no matter what she chooses to do.”

Jessup has had the opportunity to get back into coaching and stay in Ohio.

“I don’t even know how to describe it,” she said. “Where I was, it’s a small town, Berea. But now I’m 15 minutes outside of Cleveland. And you get to do so much being that close to a very big city like that. And I think experiences like that and the people that I’ve met, it’s friendships that are going to last me a very long time.”

Still young at 25 years old, Jessup plans on staying in coaching lacrosse where coaching offense is her speciality.

“I think the biggest thing, and I learned this, is getting the opportunity for girls to grow and learn the game and also grow as individuals on and off the field,” Jessup said, “It’s really building these relationships with players that, yes, in a way I’m their friend, but also (I’m) someone (they) look up to.

“I’m teaching them something, whether that be in life or playing lacrosse. And that’s something I look forward to doing for the next 10 years.”

Although the season is over and school is out for the summer at Baldwin Wallace, Jessup is still recruiting.

“The past three weekends I’ve been gone every weekend recruiting,” she said. “So, it’s a lot of just watching lacrosse, which luckily for me I don’t hate doing. It’s a lot of watching lacrosse, seeing people who might stick out that might be a good fit for our program, and just reaching out to them, a lot of conversations that have to be had.”

That almost sounds like the conversation Brawley had with Jessup, when he thought she might be a good fit for the West Forsyth girls lacrosse program all those years ago. Brawley credits his daughter with introducing him to lacrosse.

“At that point I had been an assistant coach with the boys team for about six or seven years,” Brawley said. “And I watched the game played back three years before that.”

And even at a young age, Jessup has even thought about being a head coach at some point.

“It’s something that I would look forward to in the future,” she said. “Right now I’m in a good position to where I’m able to balance having a free, easy lifestyle. I balance coaching club, coaching at BW, and I bartend on the side to make some extra money.

“So, right now it’s not something I’m looking to do just because I don’t want to take on that extra responsibility yet. I’m happy where I’m at.”

No matter where the position at Baldwin Wallace will take her, she’s grateful for what it has given her.

“I think the biggest thing that this opportunity has given me is falling in love with the game all over again, falling in love with being able to coach it, and just being around the game,” Jessup said. “Like I said, the sedentary lifestyle wasn’t for me and I found that out pretty quickly. So, being offered the opportunity to be at a school like this that’s competitive and competes at a very high level in D3 is just — I can’t put it into words. It’s amazing.”