Former DU lacrosse coach on doorstep of becoming first to win NCAA and professional championship

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Head Coach Bill Tierney of the Philadelphia Waterdogs during the 2026 PLL Regular Season, a Week 9 match up of the Utah Archers and the Philadelphia Waterdogs at Rafferty Stadium in Fairfield, Connecticut, on Saturday, July 18th, 2026.

who led the Pioneers to the 2015 NCAA Division I championship to become the first western program to accomplish that feat, is in his third season as the head coach/general manager of thefranchise takes on the Denver Outlaws in the championship on Sunday at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, where a Waterdogs victory would make Tierney the first coach to win both an NCAA and a professional title. In addition to the crown with DU, Tierney also won six titles at Princeton over a 39-year college career.by the Waterdogs in 2024, less than a year after he stepped down from DU and started working on a memoir that’s already nearly 400 pages.

He hasn’t even gotten to the part about his 14-year tenure with the Pioneers yet.

“I did a lot of writing, a lot of reading ,” Tierney said. “It was cathartic. I got a chance to look back on how blessed I’ve been through this whole career and was able to put it down on paper. ” The 75-year-old isn’t sure whether he’ll publish the book.

Maybe it’s just something for his kids and grandkids to read. Whatever the case, he’s enjoying the process that gives him a goal to work towards in the offseason.

“, call it whatever you want — I call it pure boredom for anybody who reads it,” Tierney cracked. “But my daughter-in-law is a seventh grade English teacher, so every 20 pages I’d send it to her and she’d mark it up. “The first time I asked her how i was I doing, she said, ‘Well, if you were in my seventh grade English class right now, you’d be at a C-.

But more recently, I’ve gotten it up to a B, so I’m getting there. ” While Tierney has been working on his writing skills at his home in Denver, he’s also had the Waterdogs on the come-up. In his first season at the helm, Philadelphia finished last in the league. That gave the Waterdogs the No. 1 overall pick in the next draft, whichThe attackman made an immediate difference, and the Waterdogs made the semifinals in 2025.

That laid the base for another leap in ’26, when they posted the league’s best regular-season record at 9-3 en route to Sunday’s championship. Philadelphia features four former DU players on the roster: all-star midfielder Jack Hannah has been injured, but Jimmy Freehill is a pillar on defense, Alex Stathakis is the Waterdogs’ stabilizer at faceoff and Casey Wilson also plays midfield.

Kirst and fellow Waterdogs attackman Michael Sowers say making Tierney the first coach to win a title in college and the pros is extra motivation heading into Sunday.

“It’s on everybody’s mind, even though it’s not something we talk about,” Sowers said. “This is the greatest coach of all time, so to have that ability to add that to his resume would be special for all of us. ” On Sunday, Tierney takes on a different version of a familiar franchise in the Outlaws, for whom he was a fan, considering his son Trevor Tierney was an.

That was for the Major League Lacrosse version of the Outlaws; this latest iteration of the Outlaws is part of the touring PLL, which has teams named after cities/states but has not yet reached the point of geographically-based franchises.

“Certainly the goal of the league and probably the next inevitable step is to have city-based teams,” Tierney said. “But what they’ve done so far is pretty remarkable. I started playing lacrosse in college in 1970… at first it was a rich-kid collegiate sport. And now it’s gone into cities and professionally, the PLL does it the right way.

“Our guys are treated extremely well. I never thought we’d see the day where guys were making good, solid money playing lacrosse. It’s not the NFL, NHL, NBA or MLB, but guys used to do what they’re doing now by having to get in a car and drive a thousand miles and play for a six-pack at halftime. Now, we have a true professional model.

”“After last year, all I could think about, and I think everyone else too, was ‘We’ve got to get back,'” Outlaws attackman Brennan O’Neill said.

“It’s a long road, and we had to wait a while, but we stuck to it through the highs and lows of the season. We always knew that if we did what we had to do, if we looked ourselves in the mirror when we were struggling and fixed what we had to fix, we could get back here.

” Head Coach Bill Tierney of the Philadelphia Waterdogs talks with his players during the 2026 PLL playoff semifinals, a Week 15 match up of the Boston Cannons and the Waterdogs at Zions Bank Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Monday, September 7th, 2026.

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