A letter from Coach Hewitt

Sonoma State Lacrosse Families and Alumni,

To share a little about myself, I have worked in the field of education since graduating from college in 2001 and hold a valid California Educational Specialist teaching credential.  I currently serve as the social studies teacher at a small private high school in Sebastopol, CA serving high-risk youth. I am the husband of a third grade elementary school teacher and the father of two daughters ages 10 and 6.  Outside of coaching lacrosse I enjoy cycling, surfing, and am a bit of a chess nerd.  

I have spent the last 18 years coaching high school lacrosse in both Texas and California.  Most recently, I have served as the head coach at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma for the last 12 seasons.   I absolutely love the game and will always believe I owe lacrosse far more than the sport owes me.  I cannot tell you how excited I am to compete with your players at the college level and especially at a program with the rich history and tradition of Sonoma State.  

The season ahead will be one of transition.  As I write this email, most of the players at SSU do not know me and in truth, outside of watching film from last year’s games I don’t them.  They don’t know my system and I know very little about their skill sets.  We initially enter into this school year with each other as strangers.  One thing I have learned over the course of my career is that any success we have must begin from a foundation of trust and for that foundation to be sound it must be authentic.  This takes time. The guys will want to know if the core values I speak of are something real to the way in which we work, or just a cliché attempt at ultimately hollow intentions. The process of coach/player relationship building is a marathon, not a sprint. However, that’s not a bad thing because a belief I will be teaching to all of our players is that anything truly good worth having in this life is worth working for.  Things that are free are often fleeting and usually void of fulfillment.  So we get to begin this journey together working for something good so that we can strive to create the synergy to become something great.  

Finally, I want to share again how grateful and humbled I am for this opportunity.  I understand that college lacrosse represents the apex of the competitive experience for your player.  Years of work on their end (AND YOURS) have gone into reaching this point.  I promise to work as hard as I am capable to make this time at Sonoma State special for each of the men in our program and appreciate your support of our program.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Hewitt

Men’s Lacrosse Head Coach

Sonoma State University