Before a game, freshman Lauren Watkins’s mind wanders as the nerves set in.
“I have this nervous energy and my mind races,” she said. “I just want to see what the game is going to be like.
What’s the other team going to be like? Is it going to be what we expected? How will we react to them?”
Watkins’s nervous energy is shared by three other freshmen, Hayden Dean, Carli Jacks, and Emma Mulvey who joined the varsity girls’ lacrosse team as starters this year.
Dean said she experiences the same nervous energy as Watkins but said that her nerves vanish once the game begins.
“Once that first whistle goes off, everything just kind of disappears and for that next hour all I focus on is lacrosse,” she said. “There are no more nerves. I sometimes forget where I am because all I see is the field.”
According to Jacks, the pressure to perform at a high level does not come from her team, but from herself.
“I put pressure on myself mostly. The team wants me to succeed, they are not trying to hold me back to get their own playing time,” she said.
However, their success with the team was not immediate. Watkins and Mulvey said that they were initially intimidated about trying out for the team.
“I was a little bit nervous in the beginning because I didn’t know what the other girls were going to be like, what their skill levels were, and I was just forcing a lot of pressure on myself that I didn’t need,” Watkins said.
Mulvey added that her nerves went away once she became comfortable with her teammates.
“Once I met all the girls in preseason the intimidation went away and I became really excited,” she said.
Mulvey started playing lacrosse five years ago when her friend convinced her to attend a camp. This season she is averaging 1.1 points a game.
While all the girls have prior experience playing lacrosse, only Dean plays on a club team outside of Redwood. She plays “Stick With It Lacrosse” during the offseason and has been for almost seven years.
Dean averages 1.8 goals a game so far in this season and has scored a total of 20 points.
The team has an overall record of 9-5 as of press time. Their next game is on April 30 against Novato.
