Public, Four or more years • NCAA DI, ACC ◦ NCAA DI - FBS, ACC • Tallahassee, FL
Four or more years, Public • Tallahassee, FL
School URLAthletic URL
at Florida State University
Florida State University Seminoles
Select a gender then a sport to get additional details about the team.
Florida State University
NCAA DI • ACC
Date: October 11, 2026
Would Recommend
Amazing coach, loves to win. Great guy off and on the court
Florida State University
NCAA DI • ACC
Date: October 10, 2026
Would Recommend
Good visit. Knowledge of the sport and cares about the athletes. Would recommend.
Florida State University
NCAA DI • ACC
Date: October 1, 2026
Would Recommend
she was not the right fit for me.
Florida State University
NCAA DI • ACC
Date: September 25, 2026
Would Recommend
Being part of Florida State’s new lacrosse program was supposed to feel exciting. We were told we were building something special from the ground up, creating a culture, and becoming the foundation for what this program would eventually be. That is a huge part of why I wanted to be here. But being inside the program feels very different from what was sold during recruiting. The environment often feels driven by fear, favoritism, and constantly trying not to end up on the wrong side of the coaching staff. How you are treated can feel heavily dependent on whether you are a favorite, getting meaningful playing time, traveling, injured, or considered useful at that moment. It makes it difficult to ever feel secure in your role or comfortable speaking honestly. The hardest part is feeling like we are expected to be athletes first and people second. Personal problems, mental health struggles, injuries, and things happening outside of lacrosse do not always feel like they are met with empathy. There is an overwhelming pressure to keep performing and not let anything affect you. Eventually, that starts changing how you feel about yourself and about a sport you used to love. Communication can feel inconsistent, and raising a concern does not always feel safe. There is a sense that speaking up could make your situation worse instead of fixing anything, so people learn to stay quiet. Even activities described as “voluntary” do not always feel genuinely optional, and the overall demands can make lacrosse feel like it controls nearly every part of your life. What has become especially difficult for me is realizing that these complaints did not begin at Florida State. Once I started questioning my own experience, I looked into what athletes and former athletes who say they played for Coach Tisdale at her previous programs had written. Some of it was genuinely disturbing because so many of the themes felt familiar. One former athlete alleged that after disclosing they had been sexually assaulted, Tisdale told them they “shouldn’t let things happening off the field affect me on the field.” Other athletes and former athletes have alleged NCAA practice-hour violations or that supposedly voluntary activities were effectively mandatory. They have described body-shaming, humiliation, punishment-based conditioning, favoritism, fear of retaliation, and injured players being treated as disposable. One former athlete alleged that an injured player on crutches was still expected to retrieve a bucket of balls. Another described extreme military-style training and alleged that a player sustained a concussion. Another alleged that after deciding to transfer, Tisdale went from promising to help with the process to speaking negatively about that athlete to other coaches. No anonymous account proves that every allegation happened exactly as described. But sitting inside this program now and then reading athletes from completely different years and schools describing many of the same dynamics is difficult to ignore. These allegations go far beyond people complaining that practice was too hard or that they did not play enough. If even some are accurate, they raise serious questions about athlete welfare, NCAA compliance, university oversight, injury management, retaliation, and whether athletes actually feel safe bringing concerns to someone with enormous control over their careers. That is probably what bothers me the most. From the outside, everything can look exciting and successful. Recruiting looks great. The program is new. Everyone talks about culture and building something special. Meanwhile, athletes who have negative experiences can transfer, graduate, stay anonymous because they are afraid of consequences, or simply be dismissed as bitter. Division I athletics are supposed to be demanding. We know what we signed up for. We expect hard practices, criticism, conditioning, competition, and sometimes sitting on the bench. That is not the issue. The issue is when athletes feel afraid of their coach instead of simply challenged by her. It is when injured players feel like inconveniences. It is when speaking honestly feels dangerous. It is when “optional” does not actually feel optional. And it is especially concerning when former athletes from previous programs are describing the same kinds of experiences years later. During recruiting, none of this is obvious. Coach Tisdale can be extremely convincing when talking about culture, family, opportunity, and being part of something historic at Florida State. I understand why recruits believe it. I did too. There are talented players and genuinely good people here, and this is not criticism of them. I also know that not every athlete will have the same experience, and some may genuinely love playing for her. But if you are considering coming to FSU to play for Coach Tisdale, do not only talk to the players the coaching staff chooses for you. Privately contact athletes who transferred, were injured, redshirted, rarely played, or decided the program was not for them. Ask what happens when you are struggling. Ask what happens when you are injured. Ask whether “optional” really means optional. Ask whether players feel comfortable disagreeing with her. Ask what happens when you want to transfer. And most importantly, ask why athletes across multiple programs have felt strongly enough to describe such similar experiences once they were no longer under her control. I wish I had asked those questions before I got here.
Florida State University
NCAA DI • ACC
Date: September 15, 2026
Would Recommend
I would never recommend FSU lacrosse to anyone. Sara Tisdale is so underqualified to not only be the coach at an ACC school that values women’s sports, but she should not be in charge of coaching young women. She would tell girls she wants to “punch them in the face” and that “I would’ve taken her behind the bleachers and beat her up”. There is a full video on ESPN of her hitting a player on the team going into a timeout. She lacks empathy and flaunts that she “scored a 0 on an empathy test”. She forces the team to be present in the summer but puts on a facade to the media that “the team voluntarily chose to be here” - even though the school and the program isn’t paying for anyone to be there (not even classes) and it’s on your own dime (about $3-$5K). You would think that you are getting an overall student-athlete experience at Florida State, but you won’t. There were 2 weekends off the entire fall, and when you did have off, you were not allowed to leave campus. She wouldn’t let girls leave until Halloween weekend, only because she was missing a few practices to go on vacation. There were so many girls hurt this fall because of the coach's failure of load management that she split the team into A and B practice times, but would only attend the A group's practice. Sara Tisdale creates such a competitive environment that is so toxic to team culture. Players labeled as “travelers” vs. “non-travelers”, “High minute” vs. “Low minute”, “Group A” vs. “Group B”. For individual sessions, some freshmen were left out of the invite-only group chats and were told they had to “earn” individual time. If a player is in a position where they need to get better, wouldn’t having extra reps with the coach be a great solution? How is a player supposed to earn individuals without even being allowed to show what they can do? During practices, even in small drills, Sara Tisdale would hand-pick groups to go in, leaving some girls to only touch the ball like 5 times a practice. When injured players joined the huddle to learn and be coached, they were screamed at to go back to the sidelines. Girls were expected to know every part of the scout like the back of their hands, even if it did not apply to their position. Being cold-called in meetings at 7 am, and being quizzed on the material. One time we were given a film assignment that took everyone 3-4 hours each. It was assigned at 11am and was due at 9pm on a Sunday. Sundays are the days to catch up on homework and generally the only free time we were given. Sara Tisdale creates such a fear-driven environment. She praised her few favorites constantly. Every action players take is out of fear of making her angry, instead of striving to make her proud. Nobody on the field could say they were playing for this coach. She micromanages every girl on the team but claims the team is “player-led”. She constantly goes over hours and breaks many NCAA compliance rules. No individuals are counted towards hours, no individual film sessions with coaches are counted towards hours, no meetings are counted towards hours, and compliance does nothing about it. If you do not show up to something voluntary, you will be punished. Anytime anything was reported to someone higher up, nothing happened. Girls are scared to speak up and live in a state of fear. Mental and verbal abuse is present on this team and every time a girl reached out to the sports psych, they never would hear back. Tisdale would attempt to uncover information from some confidential meetings with the therapist, who kept things strictly private. Many girls developed severe anxiety and panic attacks after being associated with this program for the past year. She treats the other coaches and support staff like trash and doesn’t care about the weight of her words or actions. She is now known in the ACC for being not only crazy, but a horrible coach among other programs. She makes her assistants travel and recruit while she stays at home. She makes her staff ride the team bus while she rides or travels separately. Word travels fast, especially when she cusses out the box/score worker at Pitt on Easter mid-game. She constantly discredited her coaching staff and contradicted their coaching advice whenever they said something. Same with captains' and upperclassmen's advice. She constantly begged for more player leadership, yet would put someone down in front of the whole team if they actually took some initiative. She is a saleswoman and manipulates every conversation. She cares for no one and puts on a façade in front of donors and athletic directors. She has cut multiple girls after this year because she is bringing in 16 freshmen and transfers as a first year program to manipulate them to do whatever she wants. She constantly talks about how girls that SHE recruited are not ACC caliber players, yet she is not an ACC caliber coach. She talks about other players behind their backs to other girls in private meetings and wants to know everything. I believe the program should not reconsider her position, and I would never recommend anyone to play for her. This is a shame that FSU could've been a top-tier program but the opportunity is ruined because of a coach they brought on (because of past relationships with the FSU AD). Such an awesome school can easily be ruined by being around this woman for way too many hours, which it unavoidable with the schedule. Believe every review on this page. They are all true.
