After the women’s lacrosse team drew a seed much worse than they hoped for during Monday’s selection show, coach Cindy Timchal lectured her team to show them the silver lining in the less-than-desireable situation.

She made a comparison: the Terp women’s basketball team was disappointed when the committee gave them a lower seed than they expected, then went on to win the national championship.

It was a cross-sport reference to try and motivate her team, an analogy that made sense. But for Timchal, whose knowledge of sports expands much further than the world of women’s lacrosse, her conversations constantly include cross-sport references, and sometimes she stretches so many parallels from other sports to women’s lacrosse that those she talks to are left scratching their heads.

“Each day it is a new athlete,” sophomore midfielder Kelly Kasper said. “If they did something good then we are going to have to strive to be like them.”

When Kasper was with some of her teammates talking about these ‘Timchalisms’ last week, they all joked about how Timchal drew references from almost everywhere to motivate them.

“Last night it was Apollo Ohno in the Olympics.” junior defender Katie Doolittle said.

“She goes, ‘He is a high quality athlete and he gets good rest, he is all about good rest, good eating habits and how the lighting is in his hotel room,'” junior defender Becky Clipp added.

“So we need to get good rest and good lighting in our hotel room tonight,” Kasper finished.

Timchal has compared her team’s performance to the Pittsburgh Steelers’ playoff run in the NFL. She has told her team in practice to be like college basketball players such as Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Joakim Noah, and she has used her ‘Timchalisms’ while speaking to reporters to get her point across.

After a strong win against Penn State earlier in the year, Timchal compared the win to LSU’s Sweet 16 win in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

“Penn State is an awfully tough team, and we knew we were going to be ready for a battle. I am just proud of our kids, they played really, really, hard – maybe they were inspired by LSU last night,” Timchal said, closing her sentence with another reference. “The key is going hard to the net and, people who are off ball, cutting hard to the net. Just like LSU.”

Timchal has also used these analogies to describe the play of some of her players.

“It’s kind of that same thing if you are a home run hitter, you might have more strikeouts,” she said when asked about Kasper’s foul problems earlier this year. “So with her, she may have more fouls but she is also coming up with more caused turnovers.”

She has used her analogies to describe what it was like to play Boston College two weeks in a row.

“Every time you step out and play a team it is always usually different. It is kind of reflective when you watch the NBA playoffs,” Timchal said after playing the Eagles the first time. “You see one time they beat a team in overtime, and the next time they get blown out, it goes back and forth, so we will just take one day at a time and one game at a time.”

And she has used them to try to become a better coach, comparing herself to Florida’s men’s basketball coach.

“I kind of listened to what Billy Donovan said to his team when they were playing for the championship final [about] they were going through a lot of adversity and struggles throughout the season, and how it made them stronger as a team.”

Yesterday, she talked about how she was disappointed in Kobe Bryant’s game seven performance and said she was fascinated with the Boston Red Sox flying Doug Mirabelli from California to catch Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball.

“She knows everything about every athlete,” Kasper said. “If it is horse racing, or anything. Any sport, she knows everything about it. I have no idea how because she is with us all of the time.”

Timchal said she makes the time to watch and focus on certain themes because she said the stories can help her team.

“What we want for our athletes is to try to find those stories or personal interest stories about overcoming odds,” Timchal said. “You find out that champions come in all different sizes and shapes, but champions always have the biggest heart.”

Timchal said following so many sports makes her a better coach, but when players were asked if her references helped them, they said they get the idea, but sometimes it just makes them laugh.

“It helps us sometimes,” Kasper said. “But sometimes we are like, ‘I can’t be like an ice skater, Cindy.'”

Contact reporter Bryan Mann at bmanndbk@gmail.com.