Ladened with experienced upperclassmen and talented underclassmen, the girls’ varsity lacrosse team is primed for a deep playoff run. It hopes to improve upon last season’s performance, which included a second-place finish in MCAL.
Although the team graduated a key player, Christine Cook as goalie, head coach Isaac Campbell says that the new players can step up and fill these holes.
“We have a deep team this year along with strong freshmen. Everyone wants it this year,” Campbell said.
According to Campbell, most of the team is returners and will have most of the same starting lineup as last year and team is on the smaller side.
The team has been practicing hard despite competition for field space due to a three week overlap with the end of soccer season.
According to coach Isaac Campbell, the competition for field space has not been an issue.
“At first I was upset thinking that we were going to lose field space but once the season started, field space began to open up and it worked out better than I could have imagined,” Campbell said.
According to junior Neeve Kennedy, the addition of portable lights has helped the team practice later at night.
Although the lights have enabled the team to continuing practicing despite limited field space, senior Lauren Watkins feels the lights have provided some challenges.
“The next [few] weeks will be challenging due to the scheduling, and the night practices won’t be high quality because of the bad lighting,” Watkins said.
Despite this issue, the team has been able to prepare off the field during preseason. The team had optional practices with trainer Stein Skaar three times a week.
“The [workout] helped us get our muscles ready and helped us build the muscles we need for lacrosse. It’s a variety of different active workouts so you still get the cardio aspect while building up muscle and it works every part of your body,” Watkins said.
According to Kennedy, despite the small turnout at preseason practices, she believes this won’t affect the team this season.
“The turnout at preseason wasn’t as good as previous years but I don’t think that will affect us as much as long as people are working hard during the season,” Kennedy said.
The team participated in an unofficial tournament consisting of four games in Davis, CA on Feb 20. in order to prepare for the season.
“We lost to some tough teams, but as a team we got to bond and everybody got tremendous amounts of playing time. Looking at the team now it just looks like it’s going to be easier for us this year to do well just because everybody knows how to play and there’s not newbies,” said Campbell.
The team consists of mostly returning upperclassmen players, and both Watkins and Kennedy believe this will come as an advantage this season.
“There’s always that period at the beginning of the [season] where you have to adjust to all the new players and we do have some [new players] but there’s less of that transition phase and we can get right to work on what we need to do,” Watkins said.
Additionally, Campbell believes having a core group of the returning players will help the team advance this season.
“Our biggest strength is the fact that we are a veteran team that has been there and played with each other and the new girls fit right in,” he said.
According to Kennedy, one challenge the team faces this season is training a new goalie.
The team has been practicing five days a week with additional practices over ski week according to Campbell. The team is focusing on improving their draw skills this season. “We have been focusing on the things that we were really bad at last year like the draw and the clears,” Campbell said.
