via GQ Magazine online, by Alex Prewitt, July 31st, 2023, Photographs: Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte

Excerpt:

The Patriots coach is famously ornery—unless, that is, he’s talking about lacrosse. We took a deeper look at his long and warm relationship with the sport.

Late one night in May 2007, Northwestern women’s lacrosse coach Kelly Amonte Hiller begrudgingly fielded a phone call from an unfamiliar Massachusetts number. “I was recruiting a player from that area code and I was like, ‘Gosh, I don’t want to take this right now, but I need to talk to this kid,’” says Amonte Hiller. Instead, she was shocked to hear the gruff, instantly recognizable voice that greeted her. “I thought someone was messing with me,” she says. “But it was really him.”

Granted, this was exactly what Amonte Hiller had been hoping for when, earlier that day, with her Wildcats preparing to enter the ‘07 NCAA tournament as two-time defending champions, she had made the bold decision to randomly reach out to the one person she could think of, in any sport, who could relate to what she was going through. Still, even as her husband found the number for the New England Patriots’ headquarters through a Google search; even as she was patched through to the head coach’s assistant by a team receptionist; and even as she sputtered through a brief voicemail explaining her intentions, Amonte Hiller remained skeptical that she would ever actually talk to Bill Belichick.

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