Bill Tierney

Bill Tierney, born William G. Tierney on September 26, 1952, is an American lacrosse coach and former college player, widely regarded as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport. A native of Levittown, New York, he played collegiate lacrosse at Cortland State, where he was on the 1973 USILA national championship team and a member of the 1972 side that reached the NCAA semifinals and upset Navy. After a master's degree at Adelphi University he coached high school lacrosse before his first college post at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1982. He later served as an assistant at Johns Hopkins, then led Princeton from 1988, winning six NCAA Division I championships between 1992 and 2001, and added a seventh with the University of Denver in 2015, the first title for a team west of the Appalachian Mountains. He coached Team USA to gold at the 1998 World Lacrosse Championships, entered the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2002, and became head coach of the Philadelphia Waterdogs in 2024.