- December 26, 2024
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Matanzas High School athletics is a family affair for Brandie and Lance Alred and their daughters, Zoe and Addie.
Brandie Alred is the school’s department head for science and teaches honors anatomy and physiology and an AICE course. She also has been the girls golf coach since 2015 and took over the girls lacrosse team last season.
Her husband, Lance, has been officiating wrestling for 14 years and began officiating boys lacrosse last year. He also volunteers to run the “chain gang” for the Pirates’ football games.
Zoe and Addie both play two sports. Zoe, a senior, plays golf and lacrosse. Addie, a sophomore, plays volleyball and lacrosse.
Brandie has been involved with both of Zoe’s teams throughout her high school career.
“I think it's so great having parents who both care and have gotten involved,” Zoe said. “Even my dad, when we first started playing lacrosse, he started picking up the rules and is now a ref for boys lacrosse.”
Brandie helped out the golf team as an assistant coach her first year at the school in 2013-14. The following season she became the head coach.
“Zoe had started playing golf, and I wanted her to have a dedicated coach. So I said, ‘I’m going to figure this out,’” Brandie said. “So I applied for the position, and I just learned a little bit every year to get better and better. I play a little bit of golf, but for the most part, I'm a better instructor than I am a player. I made sure that we had a golf pro to help the girls with their swings, and then I worked on course management. I still tell them to this day, if you really want to work on your swing, then you need to see a golf pro.”
While she knew a little bit about golf before taking over the team, Brandie knew next to nothing when girls lacrosse coach Jeff Goren asked her to be his assistant in 2023 when Zoe was a sophomore on the team. The following year, Goren stepped down.
With no one stepping in, Brandie volunteered.
“I said, OK, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all in. So, I made sure I bought some books. I did so much research over the summer, and I told our athletic director that I would be willing to be the lacrosse coach, but if someone better came along, then they were more than welcome to hire them, but I wanted to make sure our girls in our school had somebody.”
Jordan Butler, who just recently stepped down as athletic director, decided to roll the dice and hired her.
She did a great job with our girls golf team. I saw how she built relationships with those girls, so we gave her an opportunity with girls lacrosse knowing she didn’t know much about the sport at the time,
—JORDAN BUTLER on Brandie Alred
“She did a great job with our girls golf team. I saw how she built relationships with those girls, so we gave her an opportunity with girls lacrosse knowing she didn’t know much about the sport at the time,” Butler said.
There wasn’t a lot of pressure. The team had gone winless for four straight seasons.
But in Brandie Alred’s first year as a coach, the Pirates went 5-9. Their first win of the season came against rival Flagler Palm Coast, a team they had not beaten since 2017.
“She had one year as an assistant coach, and she spent a lot of time learning more about the sport,” Butler said. “With her ability to implement discipline and build relationships, she turned the program around in one year. I don’t think they won multiple games in a season for six or seven years.”
Zoe scored a team-high 49 goals for the Pirates. She said her mother watched a lot of videos to prepare for the season.
“The team dynamic definitely did change,” Zoe said. “The team just had a better relationship overall with the coaches and with each other. Our drills got better. And it was just like a lot more communication, a lot more trust.”
Said Addie: “You could see that my mom wanted to make our team better and just everyone better, even if they've never played the sport before. She loves to have new people come out there.”
At home, the four of them watch lacrosse games on TV.
“It’s definitely something we can bond over which I think is really cool,” Zoe said. “When a game is on the TV, we can all watch it and understand what's happening. I just think it's great to have parents, specifically my mom in this case, so involved. She's at my school, she's (the advisor) for the Senior Class Board and I'm on the Senior Class Board. So it's just great to have family so involved who cares and wants to learn.”
Lance is now involved with three sports, wrestling and boys lacrosse as an official and handling the down markers on the football sideline. He also helped the Pirates find a new wrestling coach in Dennis Kitko.
“I knew Dennis for over 20 years,” Lance said. “We were both going to grad school at Florida State. We both wrestled in college. He wrestled at Cornell, and I wrestled at Chattanooga. We had a mutual friend, and we became good friends.”
Kitko was living in Japan at the time, but he was looking to return to the states, and he took the job.
“Lance gave us a lead on a wrestling coach, and it turned out to be a really good one,” Butler said. “Lance is a huge supporter of our school and makes it out to at least one event for every sport we have.”
Addie is rehabbing from ACL surgery but expects to be ready for lacrosse season. She has three more seasons to play for her mom. But Brandie hopes to continue leading the program after both of her daughters graduate.
“I hope to really build a good lacrosse program, and eventually if someone knows more than I do and they want to come in and take it to the next level, I am A-OK with that,” Brandie said. “But I will be here for the long-term, as long as they need me.”
