Clara Bissell begins her third year as an assistant coach for the Transylvania women’s lacrosse program for the 2021 season.
Bissell (pronounced BISS-ull) arrived to Lexington in the summer of 2018 after two seasons as a women’s lacrosse graduate assistant coach at NCAA Division II University of Charleston in Charleston, West Virginia.
“Clara embodies the values and mission of our program, Transylvania University, and D-III athletics,” says Transylvania women’s lacrosse head coach Lauren Wentworth.
In her first season at Transylvania, Bissell helped lead the Pioneers to new heights with a 15-5 overall record, a perfect 6-0 record in Heartland Collegiate Lacrosse Conference play on the way to clinching their second straight NCAA Tournament berth and the second in program history. Bissell helped guide the Pioneers to the HCLC regular-season and conference tournament championship in 2019.
Along with stirring team success, Bissell assisted in the development and individual success of several Pioneers; three Pioneers were named to the IWLCA All-Academic Honor Roll in 2019 while two women’s lacrosse student-athletes earned selection to IWLCA All-Region Teams. Bissell helped guide the selection of eight Pioneers for All-HCLC team honors at the conclusion of the 2019 season. The women’s lacrosse team success also translated to Transylvania Athletics earning the HCAC All-Sport Trophy for excellence across all women’s sports sponsored by the conference.
Bissell assisted with the Transylvania field hockey team in the fall of 2019, aiding the precocious Pioneers to a two-win improvement from the year before.
In her second season with the Transylvania women’s lacrosse team in the spring of 2020, Bissell helped steer a Pioneer team to a 3-2 overall record in an abbreviated season which witnessed the program’s first ever victory over Capital University in a campaign with a collection of milestone nonconference victories.
A 2016 graduate of Division III Berry College in Rome, Georgia, Bissell lettered three seasons in women’s lacrosse for the Vikings prior to embarking upon a diverse coaching career spanning an array of collegiate and youth coaching experiences.
The Naples, Florida native carries experience in rapid program-building to a Transylvania squad which continues a steady rise through the Division III hierarchy.
Bissell joined a first-year Charleston program in 2017 coming off a 1-11 season, assisting in engineering a three-game improvement in her first season with the Golden Eagles and a four-game improvement in her second season.
In addition to creating a culture of tradition and winning at Charleston, Bissell oversaw recruiting operations for the budding program, resulting in five players earning all-conference recognition in 2018. Along with her duties at University of Charleston, Bissell has served as a coach for Nike Excelerate Girls’ Lacrosse Camps for the past three summers at Berry College, Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and at Northern Kentucky University.
In 2019, Bissell joined the coaching staff of a new Lexington-area girls’ club program, Sizzle Select and coached during the summer and fall; this program’s aim is to elevate girls lacrosse in the Lexington community. Bissell has coached with the Sizzle Lacrosse Club for the last two years.
Bissell belongs to a family heavily involved in lacrosse coaching; her father is a high school girls’ lacrosse coach in Naples, Florida and her sister serves as an assistant women’s lacrosse coach at Methodist University.
