Former Lakeland High School field hockey star Kendell Combs graduated earlier this year from Virginia Commonwealth University after a successful career with the Rams and is now working for a cross-city rival.

This summer, Combs was officially hired on at the University of Richmond to be a volunteer assistant coach for the schools’ field hockey team.

“I think it’s just kind of honestly a dream come true that I’m able to work in ministry and coach field hockey,” she said, alluding to her other job at Celebration Church and Outreach Ministry.

Combs expressed great appreciation to her pastor and to Richmond Spiders coach Gina Lucido for allowing her to blend her schedules so she can do both.

She has a certain number of hours she regularly fulfills for her job with the church, and outside of that, she will do whatever she can to help the Spiders, including traveling with them for all of their away games.

What helped lead to Combs’ working for a cross-city rival of VCU was Richmond’s field hockey camp at which she helped coach in the summer.

“At first, it was kind of like, ‘I’m just helping you out because you’re just across town, and I can come and coach your camp,’” Combs said.

The first time she assisted at the camp was two years ago.

“And then I started having a bond between Coach Gina and I,” Combs said. “She has great faith, and I really looked up to her in that way, just having a good relationship with God, and then having her almost kind of like as a mentor. And then I guess it sort of evolved into this, because their old volunteer assistant, she was awesome, but she was on baby No. 2 of her life.”

It was still remarkable that Combs was able to make the transition from VCU to Richmond so smoothly given the competitive relationship the two institutions’ sports teams share.

“It’s an ugly rivalry, cross-city rivalry,” Combs said.

But it was not like that to her personally.

“I wouldn’t say there was a big relationship between our teams, but I would definitely say (there was) a great relationship between me and the Richmond Spiders, although they’re like big rivals,” Combs said. “And we began to look past the rivalry and just be like, ‘Hey these are awesome people, and they’re great hockey players. I’m going to respect you on the field, but I’m still going to play just as hard.’”

It was an attitude that was perfectly in sync with the culture that Lucido cultivates at Richmond, and it was an attitude that changed the complexion of Spider-Ram games for Lucido.

“It was still a huge game, but it ended, to me, with sportsmanship being at the forefront instead of, ‘We beat the big bad orange and gold 10 minutes away,’ or vice versa,” the coach said.

Normally Lucido gets her own players to coach at the summer camp because they know the culture she is trying to create.

“I think Kendell was the very first outside competitor to come in and work our camp, and so I think it speaks volumes about the kind of person she is,” Lucido said. “Right away we realized just what a special young woman of character she was. I got introduced to her because her best friend of the same year was on my team, so that’s how the whole introduction happened.”

Of course, Combs frequently has to answer the question of what it is like for her coaching for a VCU rival.

“The way that I’ve answered the question and will continue to answer is when I played Richmond as a Ram on the field, I showed them the utmost respect, and then vice versa, when I’m coaching for Richmond, I’ll still show VCU the utmost respect,” Combs said. “So, yeah, I think it goes both ways.”