“I take a lot of my coaching from, kind of, the soccer passing that I learned in high school,” she said. “Field hockey is played similar to soccer, and there’s a lot we can learn from other sports.”
After being hired as IU field hockey coach Feb. 9, Janney came to Bloomington last week with nothing in her office but a desk and a basketball signed by Tom Crean. For 10 years, she coached field hockey at Temple University. Now, she’s building a new home for herself at IU.
Janney was born in South Korea and adopted by American parents. She grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, near Dallas.
“I was pretty fortunate to grow up in Fort Worth because it was an amazing city, and I enjoyed living in Texas,” she said.
Janney’s adopted parents made Fort Worth home while working in the Air Force. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a technical writer.
Janney attended a small high school with a graduating class of about 70 students. In high school, she was a tri-sport athlete, playing soccer, softball and field hockey.
She said soccer was her best sport, but her field hockey coach convinced her to pursue further involvement in field hockey.
"(I) ended up having an amazing high school field hockey coach who just came in right as I was a freshman, changed our program, really made me excited about the sport,” Janney said.
She went on to play field hockey at Wake Forest after turning down a full scholarship offer at LSU to be part of the Demon Deacon’s field hockey program.
Janney said her favorite memory of playing field hockey at Wake Forest was the chemistry her team had, and she tries to instill that chemistry in the teams she coaches.
IU Vice President and Director of Athletics Fred Glass said her connection with her athletes is part of why Janney was brought to IU.
“She connects with her kids,” Glass said. “The kids at Temple really like her. The people at Temple really liked her.”
Glass said he saw all of the success Janney brings to the playing field in her time coaching at Temple.
“For the 10 years that she was there, they went to post season every single year,” he said.
Janney brings coaching experience, including tenure at her high school, to IU. She coached at her high school for three years, and has since coached for 13 years in college.
After Janney coached high school, she became an assistant coach at James Madison University. She was later a first assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by head coach at Temple University.
She said the opportunity to coach in the Big Ten was one of the reasons she decided to come to IU.
“The opportunity to work in the Big Ten — just really excited about what’s going on at Indiana, in the Big Ten,” Janney said. “The facilities that they had here at Indiana are amazing and a nice upgrade from what I was used to.”
