She was very outward focused from day one, with a passionate heart of how she could make others around her better. As a collegiate athlete, she played defense when we needed her there, she played middie when we needed her there and she played attack when we needed her there and when we needed the draw, Ida did that for us too. She was a starter for us in every position and she went whole-heartedly into every position change we assigned to her. And without fail, she made every system work better by her being part of it. That is such a rare quality to have and she had it, and know that was the case in other areas of her life too.
Ida was fun, funny, goofy but was all about business when competition was on the line. She loved competition and had an amazing competitive spirit and you always wanted her on your team because in any game, any sport or event, she would give her all. But win or lose, her response would be relatively the same...she would always be the first to congratulate the winner if she lost, or go give the losing team a hug and with that Ida twinkle in her eye, say that they should keep trying and they would get it next time.
Ida was one of the toughest players I have ever coached...I have many examples of this but one example was at the very first practice in January, she came up to me holding out her hand and said, “Here coach, can you hold this?” and dropped something small in my hand. I looked at it, and asked, “What is this?” She replied that she had been hit in the mouth and it was part of her tooth and then quickly ran away as I was asking more questions because she was up next in the drill. Ida never wanted to sit out of anything, even for one second of practice, even for a broken tooth.
