Alumni, Current Players and Parents Want Head Men’s Lacrosse Coach Gone

In May, a group of recent Colorado College Men’s Lacrosse graduates started gathering signatures for an online document titled “Petition to hire a new head coach of Colorado College Men’s Lacrosse.” It garnered 147 signatures in just six days.

On May 8, they emailed the petition to Athletic Director Lesley Irvine and then-Senior Associate Athletic Director Greg Capell. There were three parts: a letter outlining why the signees believed that Head Coach Mike Horowitz should be replaced, 28 pieces of testimony from alumni, parents and current players and the 147 signatures themselves. It was the culmination of nearly four years of complaints against Horowitz that began during his first season in charge. 

“Mike Horwitz (sic) remains the head coach of the men’s Lacrosse program and continues to have the support of the College,” the Athletics Department said in a statement to the Catalyst. “We look forward to supporting the lacrosse team this academic year.”

The petition, which the Catalyst obtained, details a number of issues with Horowitz’s coaching style and the trajectory of the program since he took over. In interviews, alumni, parents and current players reiterated the petition’s material to the Catalyst. 

Some are concerned with the team’s performance. Others say that Horowitz lacks the interpersonal skills necessary to be a head coach and has created a mental health crisis on the team. Others still are concerned with his demeanor on the sideline, lack of connection with the alumni community and rate at which players are leaving the program. 

Several alumni, parents, and current players also said that the program has lost donors since Horowitz took charge, but the Catalyst could not verify whether financial support has waned. 

A few weeks after the alumni delivered the petition to Irvine, current players conducted a survey of the team to determine whether they wanted Horowitz to return in the fall. A total of 84% of the team responded, and 71% said they didn’t want Horowitz to come back.

But a player who graduated in 2025 said the team’s opinion regarding Horowitz isn’t cut-and-dry. “For every person that filed a complaint, there’s an opposite person that has no complaints at all and in fact has praises for Coach Horowitz,” he said. 

Three other current players said they like Horowitz and think that the group’s woes on the field are a product of team culture, not the coach. “I think that we need to buy into a winning culture,” one of them said. “More work and more respect for the program, and more pride in the program.”

The Catalyst spoke with two parents of players, eight alumni of the program and six current players, all but two on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Four other current players didn’t respond to requests for comment and one declined. CC President Manya Whitaker told the Catalyst that she could not comment because it was a personnel issue. The Athletics Department declined a request for in-person interviews with Irvine and Horowitz and instead provided a written statement. The Board of Trustees did not respond to a request for comment, which the Catalyst sent to its general email. 

The Catalyst obtained a copy of the petition, emails between Irvine and alumni, data from the player-run survey of the team and a slide deck that a group of parents and alumni compiled and shared with the Board of Trustees in June. The Catalyst also obtained letters from parents to former President L. Song Richardson, Whitaker and Irvine dating back to 2023, Horowitz’s second season in charge. 

“I’m baffled by the fact that the however many hundred signatures and testimonies we got didn’t move the needle,” said Andrew Harwood, who played goalie for CC and graduated in 2020. “I don’t plan on donating a dime to the program until they start taking player and alumni feedback seriously.”

Sean Woods was the head coach of CC lacrosse for ten seasons before Horowitz took over. He led the Tigers to seven NCAA tournament appearances and took them to the national quarterfinals for the first time in program history in 2021. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Woods helped establish CC as a lacrosse school, regularly competing with teams in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), considered the best conference in NCAA Division III lacrosse. Woods departed after the wildly successful 2021 season to become the head coach at Amherst College, which plays in the NESCAC. 

Horowitz was hired in October 2021. He came to CC after six successful seasons at Division I Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pa., where he led the team to four consecutive regular-season conference titles.

Alumni who played under Horowitz at CC and current players detailed a number of concerns with his behavior and coaching style in interviews with the Catalyst. 

Three alumni and one current player said he struggles to connect with players in ways that are typical of head coaches. “He just really lacks personal skills and communications skills that you would expect a head coach to have,” said one alum.

Five alumni and three current players said that Horowitz makes rude and degrading comments to his student-athletes. Emails from parents to Irvine echo the same sentiment, as do many of the comments on the petition. “Since he began coaching at CC last season he has been chronically denigrating, demoralizing, mocking and shaming the men on the team,” a group of parents wrote in an anonymous email to Irvine on March 1, 2023. 

Two alumni and two current players said that Horowitz often shames players for how much they weigh, sometimes in front of the whole team. “He would call out a freshman kid for being too light as we’re walking into a film session with everyone sitting there or do the same thing when it comes to a larger guy that’s trying to lose weight,” one alum said. Testimony in the petition describes similar behavior.

With Horowitz at the helm, players spend significant amounts of time trying to convince teammates not to quit, according to four alumni and three current players. “There was an always ongoing conversation about how much the coach sucked or how much kids wanted to quit,” an alum said. 

Players weren’t always successful in getting their teammates to stick with it. Since Horowitz took over, at least 20 players have left the program. Some have gone on to have successful careers at top lacrosse schools. One player won two Division III national championships, and another was an All-American honorable mention at a Division I school the year after he left CC. Some have left the team but not the school. Others have transferred and stopped playing. 

“We’ve seen so many of our friends leave,” a current player said.

Not everyone on the team wants Horowitz out. Aidan Niklaus, a junior attackman, says he’s seen a lot of growth and change in Horowitz’s coaching style over the past two seasons. “He’s passionate,” Niklaus said. “He’s going to get frustrated when it’s time to get frustrated and he’s going to also show that he cares about you. I think he’s improved a lot in that.”

Niklaus also said that having alumni drive the effort to get Horowitz removed has been challenging for the team. “We’ve talked a lot about how it is tough as a player on the team to have, as much as we love our alumni, to have them driving the thing and being like, ‘Hey, you guys should have a new coach,’ when really all we want to do is play and win,” he said. 

Two other current players said that they think Horowitz is right for the program. “I think he’s very knowledgeable about the game, and I think he cares a lot about the team,” one of them said. 

Four current players, including Niklaus, said Horowitz is a tactically sound coach. “He knows ball,” Niklaus said. “He knows X’s and O’s.”

As for performance, the team has struggled to get the results it did when Woods was in charge. Woods had a win percentage of .721 over ten seasons. Horowitz’s is .533 after four seasons, while playing considerably weaker competition, according to the petition. 

“Across four seasons, it is difficult to point to a quality win under Coach Horowitz,” the petition reads. “From potential recruits, to the local Colorado Springs community, and to the greater, tight-knit lacrosse community, people are wondering why Colorado College has immensely struggled in the past four seasons after making the Elite 8.”

Players and parents have been making their concerns clear since Horowitz’s first year on the job, according to alumni who were on the team at the time. The Catalyst also obtained emails from parents to Irvine and then-President Richardson dating back to his second season in charge that express serious issues with his coaching style and behavior. 

“These players are in crisis and need more immediate action,” an email to then-President Richardson from May 2023 reads. “This is not about sour grapes over playing time or losing games. As of now, many feel their only real options are to quit the team or transfer.”

“At Colorado College and in the Division of Athletics & Recreation, the well-being of our student-athletes is our highest priority,” the Athletics Department said in a statement to the Catalyst. “We listen closely to their input and value feedback that helps us enhance their teams and experiences.”

Four seasons of feedback came to a head in May when the alumni who organized the petition sent it to Irvine and Capell. 

The petition has five sections that explain why the signees believe that CC needs a new head coach. 

The first, titled “Overview,” alleges that upon the conclusion of the 2025 season, Horowitz said that the program was in a better place than it was when he took over in 2021. “As alumni of the program, we know that statement to be vehemently false,” the petition reads. “The program is by no means in a better place, on and off the field.”

The next section, “Weak Scheduling and Poor Win / Loss Record,” describes what the authors of the petition see as the program’s fall from grace. Horowitz has lost 17 games to unranked teams in the past three years, they write. “For a program whose standard is to sit firmly in the top 20, this is unacceptable,” the petition reads. 

The petition continues with a section called “Community” which says that there have been complaints from parents and alumni about Horowitz’s attitude towards them after games and in other situations. “It takes a village to bring championships home, and Coach Horowitz has run off great people that have made our program successful in the past,” it reads. 

Before it concludes, the petition features an aggregated list of complaints from upperclassmen on the 2025 roster. Some of those include a high transfer rate and Horowitz’s unsportsmanlike behavior towards referees. 

It ends with a call to action: “We owe a lot to this program, and we should do everything in our power to keep it thriving. The current head coaching situation is untenable, and it is time to make a change.”

Upon receiving the petition, Irvine organized a Zoom meeting with the six alumni who sent it to her. On that call, she asserted that player feedback for Horowitz had been largely positive, citing an end-of-season Athletics Department survey, according to four alumni that took part. 

After the call, players on the 2025 team organized the poll that showed they didn’t want Horowitz to return for the 2026 season. 

The alumni who organized the petition shared those results with Irvine via email. In response, she said she was planning on carrying out supplemental observation of the lacrosse team during the following season. 

After that, contact with Irvine regarding the petition fizzled, but some alumni and parents weren’t satisfied. In June, a group of them sent a slide deck to the Board of Trustees titled “June is Male Mental Health Month.” It included six testimonials from lacrosse players about how Horowitz’s behavior had damaged their mental health. 

“If the situation does not change, and the coaches and administrators continue to dismiss student athletes’ comments and opinions, I have been advised by medical professionals to not continue to play lacrosse,” one of them read. “To reiterate, my mental health has declined so much as a result of the athletic department and Coach Horowitz, that I have been advised to not continue to play sports at Colorado College.”

“Whether it’s to the coach or the AD, if anyone brings up that there’s an issue with mental health,
that has to be taken very seriously because you don’t know what’s gonna happen,” said Pablo Nyarady, the parent of a player who graduated recently. 

The slide deck also included results from the player-run survey about Horowitz and called on the board to take action. 

Earlier this summer, someone anonymously mailed Horowitz a physical copy of the petition and a letter, obtained by the Catalyst, imploring him to resign. “More than 100 players have come through this program during your tenure, and far too many have left with disappointment rather than pride,” it read. It concluded, “It’s time to reflect honestly on the damage that’s been done and step aside.”

The Catalyst could not confirm whether Horowitz received the letter.  

Despite the efforts of parents, alumni, and some current players, Horowitz will remain at the helm this year.

The team started official training this week, the beginning of a short, informal fall season meant to help them prepare for the real deal in the spring. For some players, it means the beginning of hard afternoons and evenings on Washburn Field, practicing a sport they don’t love as much as they once did.

But regardless of how any one of them feels about their coach, current players told the Catalyst that this year is about them, not him. 

“It’s the hand that we got dealt and we’re going to have to try to play it the best we can,” a current player said. “We’re super focused on ourselves. Not worried about him, just doing what we can to make our team good, culture-wise and playing-wise.”

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