Steve Jennings

Steven ("Steve") Michael Jennings (born July 24, 1969 in Bethesda, Maryland) is a former field hockey defender, who competed for the United States since 1991 and finished twelfth with the national team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. He is deployed as head coach at the American University in Washington DC.

Jennings was a member of the US women's national team coaching staff in both 2001 and 2002, and helped the United States earn the bid for the World Hockey Cup. In November 2002, he traveled to Perth, Australia, where the United States finished ninth out of sixteen teams at the World Cup. Jennings has also coached the national team at the Champion Challenge in South Africa and at the World Cup Qualifier in England. His other destinations with the national team have been Holland, Germany, New Zealand and India.

He was a member of the men's national team from 1991 to 1999 and participated in 91 international test matches. He took a bronze medal in the 1995 Pan American Games and helped the United States to fifth place in the 1999 Pan American Games. He also participated in eight United States Olympic Festivals and won three gold and two silver medals.

While coaching at American University, Jennings has shown a particular interest in creating "new rules" during the execution of drills and small sided games. He has many notable mannerisms including the "double hand whooshing" motion to imitate a strong push pass, in addition to the "arms crossed in deep concentration" stance. Jennings is exceptionally skilled in the areas of aerial dribbling, imitations of various movie characters including Napoleon Dynamite and Borat, and spiking his hair to its maximum vertical extension. He has also been known to pick up and move tiny leaves and other microscopic debris a distance of four inches or less from the playing surface as he coaches from the sideline. Alias: Uncle Jesse, Derek Zoolander.

References

AU Eagles [http://aueagles.cstv.com/sports/w-fieldh/mtt/jennings_steve00.html]
Southern Living article (1996) [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3676/is_199601/ai_n8754316]
Photo [http://graysmatter.codivation.com/content/binary/zoolander_face.jpg]