Working With Penguins or Players, Coach Makes Each Moment Count
For assistant women’s lacrosse coach Jennifer Douglas, everything began to fall into place — or perhaps waddle into place — about three years ago. That’s when she moved to Kansas City to accept her dream job with the Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium.
Douglas is an Advanced Animal Care Specialist with the Water’s Edge team, and her passion is serving as one of the point persons for 85 penguins. That means she’s the liaison between them and management, advocating for them and making sure they have the best quality of life possible.
She knows each penguin by name, feeds them by hand, recording every fish they eat, and spends hours each week cleaning up their, um, droppings. Douglas admits not all parts of the job are equally satisfying, but she says it’s truly stunning to scuba dive with penguins swimming past her at 25 miles per hour while she cleans the rocks in their underwater environment.
A self-professed teacher at heart, Douglas’s coaching skills come in handy training penguins such as Marlin, who she has cared for since the day he hatched. She’s helped him to learn the behaviors needed to enter a crate and travel offsite as an animal ambassador. Other memorable projects include training a 17-year-old penguin, Palaua, to stand still long enough to receive necessary medical treatments.
Douglas said she was still new to the city when she decided to head to the gym for a workout one Saturday. It was there that Rockhurst head women’s lacrosse coach Molly McCourt noticed her Ohio Wesleyan lacrosse t-shirt, struck up a conversation and asked if she’d ever considered coaching. That led to dream job number two.
“Rockhurst is one of the best environments for lacrosse I’ve ever seen,” Douglas said. “The players are hardworking, intelligent, amazing humans who graduate to transform the world around them because of the program here.”
Although she regularly puts in 10-hour days to accommodate both her roles, she says it’s worth it.
“I’m so grateful for the rewards and the moments that make up every day.”
This story originally appeared in the summer 2026 issue of RU magazine.
