National Lacrosse Title and a Job

May 2019 was a big month for Jennifer Giles. Not only did the Howard County, Md., native bring home a Maryland Smith diploma with a degree in marketing, she also helped take home the NCAA national championship trophy as a midfielder on the Terps women’s lacrosse team. 

Giles, Maryland’s leading scorer with 59 goals and 23 assists in the championship season, was named “Big Ten Midfielder of the Year.” As a team leader, she helped balance everyone’s personalities to make sure they were always on the same page, leading to an undefeated season.

Now she’s gearing up to start work in August for Baltimore-based Insight Global, a staffing company for IT firms. She says her time at Maryland Smith and her work on the lacrosse field both prepared her for a career in business.

“Just making everyone feel confident in themselves is really important for me – to make sure everyone has that confidence leading onto the field, confidence in themselves and confidence in each other,” Giles says. “That’s how a team can succeed, when you believe in each other.”

She says communication is a huge thing. “Being able to communicate the right ways in different situations is something that will translate perfectly to the business world. Learning those skills – how to talk to people, whether it’s positive or negative – and just keeping everyone motivated and creating a really good atmosphere for everyone to succeed.”

The Maryland women’s lacrosse team has been a powerhouse. In Giles’s four years on the team, the women made it to the Final Four of the NCAA National Championship each year. In 2017, Giles’s sophomore year, the team brought home the national champion title, then lost in the championship game the following year before securing the title again this year. 

Giles started playing lacrosse very young. “I was probably only 5 or so,” she says. With three older sisters who played the game, she first picked it up on the sidelines. “They’re my biggest fans,” she says of her family. 

Giles’s parents are both University of Maryland alumni. “I’ve got that Terp blood in my family,” she says. It was only natural that she come to Maryland to play lacrosse, but she says juggling both schoolwork and athletics was tough. By her second semester on campus, Giles had it figured out.

“You sometimes have to give up some nights with friends and stuff like that so that you can actually study,” she says. When other students were studying, Giles and her teammates often had to be at practice. 

She credits the coaches with great skill building, confidence building and life lessons as mentors and teachers. “Playing for them was something that meant a lot to me,” she says.

Athletic advisors helped team members create the best class schedules. Giles made sure to fit in rigorous business classes, like finance, in the fall, opposite the lacrosse season, so she wouldn’t miss classes for game travel.

Giles says the friendships she made over the years with coaches and teammates have meant the most to her.

“I’m so proud of all of my teammates and we just have the most amazing coaches,” Giles says. “We tried to take it game by game and learn from our mistakes and hope to get better. It’s still honestly surreal to me, that we were able to come out on top. It was incredible.”

Giles says she’ll return to the University of Maryland for next year’s women’s lacrosse season, but this time as a fan watching from the stands, “which will be really weird,” she says. 

She will continue to play in the Women’s Professional Lacrosse League. She’s on the Pride team, part of a new program, with five teams competing on the East Coast.  

“It will be really awesome for me to keep lacrosse in my life and still be competitive,” Giles says. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

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