Samantha Giacolone

Biography

Samantha Giacolone joined the Carolina women’s lacrosse coaching staff as an assistant coach in September of 2025. A highly decorated goalkeeper while in college, Giacolone transitioned to the coaching world and has become one of the nation’s top assistants over her six-year career overseeing defenses and goalies. Giacolone came to Chapel Hill from Coastal Carolina, where she served as an assistant coach and defensive coordinator for three seasons (2022, ’24 and ’25). While at Coastal, she helped the Chanticleers to the ASUN Championship in 2024 and was a member of the conference’s Coaching Staff of the Year. Giacolone mentored the ASUN Midfielder (Avery McIlwaine) and Freshman (Evelyn Kitchin) of the Year in ‘24, while producing six all-conference defensive honorees over her last two seasons. In between stints at CCU, Giacolone served as the goalies coach and defensive coordinator at Stanford during the 2023 season. While with the Cardinal, she coached Pac-12 Co-Goalkeeper of the Year (Kara Rahaim) and saw three defensive players garner All-Pac-12 first-team honors (Rahaim, Caroline Mondiello, and Ailish Kelly). Giacolone spent the 2020 and ’21 seasons at Furman as the defensive coordinator. Furman swept the SoCon awards in 2021 as Hannah Demis was named the SoCon Offensive Player of the Year, Avery Whitehead was tabbed the SoCon Defensive Player of the Year, and Meagan Beal picked up SoCon Freshman of the Year honors. In all, the Paladins placed nine athletes on the All-SoC