IWLCA Names 2021 Kristina Quigley Scholarship Winner
IWLCA President Liz Grote has announced that Bob Dachille, head coach at Lander University, has been named the 2021 winner of the Kristina Quigley Scholarship. This award honors the former Seton Hill coach, Kristina Quigley, who was tragically killed in a bus accident in 2013 while traveling with her team.
“We were all very impressed with Bob’s candidacy,” said Mike Scerbo, foremer head coach at Duquesne University and chair of the selection committee, and Quigley’s mentor in her first collegiate coaching position. “Not only does Bob emphasize the importance of family as a core value for his program, he and his wife serve as foster parents, and live that value daily. The Dachilles welcomed their son Jack to the family this past spring, and we all know how hard it is for new parents to leave an infant behind. We hope that providing support for the entire family to travel to Dallas will allow them to have family time even while Bob is working.”
In his scholarship application, Dachille wrote, “As a coach, the #1 core value that I have taken with me to each institution has been "Family." It is an absolute necessity to make sure that the group around me is united as one and can have open, honest, and healthy relationships. It is a priority for me to make sure that I can model this to my team by allowing them to see me with my family. I do not keep my family separate from my team or vice versa. In my first year here at Lander we had Sunday Dinner twice a month, where the team would come over to our house to hang out with my wife, our foster kiddos and myself... As I'm typing this right now, we are getting ready to bring our son and two foster kiddos to our team bonding event tonight.”
The Kristina Quigley Scholarship description reads, in part:
To honor the passion, commitment and values of Kristina Quigley, the IWLCA has established a scholarship in her name. The purpose of this scholarship will be to subsidize a trip to the location of the IWLCA Annual Meeting for the recipient’s family. The time-intensive nature of the coaching profession is significant and family time is often sacrificed. The opportunity for a family to join a coach on this trip represents the very essence of Kristina Quigley.
Dachille was selected by the Kristina Quigley Scholarship committee based on the essay response detailing his “passion for coaching and family,” and describing “what it would mean to have your family with you at the IWLCA Convention.” After being informed of his selection, Dachille said: “I am incredibly honored to be the recipient of the 2021 Kristina Quigley scholarship. Having had the privilege to inherit the program that Kristie built at Erskine after she went to Seton Hill, I was able to witness the tremendous impact that she had on all her players. Most importantly, it was quite clear that rather than build a wall between her family and her team, she seamlessly merged the two. This has been such an important value to me as I now have a family of my own and I try to model similar behavior. I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to have my wife and son join me during one of my favorite weeks of the year for professional development and reconnecting with friends at the IWLCA Convention.”
The 2021 IWLCA Convention, presented by StringKing, will be held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, TX, from November 17-19. Dachille will attend with his wife Kaley, and their son, Jack (seven months).