After fielding a successful boys lacrosse team for three years, Seattle Academy started its first girls lacrosse team last year. Their season went well with around 30 girls going out for the high school team.
Girl’s lacrosse is a lot different from boy’s lacrosse. In girl’s lacrosse players wear no padding, just eye protectors, there is very little contact allowed, and they play with smaller pockets in their lacrosse sticks. Even though this new program started just last year it is growing quite fast with 22 girls playing in the middle school program and 27 in the high school program last year. The teams have been improving steadily.
“It was really cool to see the growth from the start of the year to the end of the year,” said Girl’s Head Lacrosse Coach Hilary Bowen. “They did awesome, learned and improved a ton, and I’m excited to carry that over into next year.”
The girl’s lacrosse team had a great season last year playing with a JV schedule. Although, they did play Garfield’s Varsity team at the end of the year and did well against them. After only losing one game last season, the girls lacrosse team petitioned to play a Varsity schedule this season. However, the Washington Schoolgirls Lacrosse Association (WSLA), the governing body for girls lacrosse in Washington State, denied the petition, because previous teams who have moved up to Varsity after one year have ended up regretting it.
“They decided that we should stay one more year [in JV],” said Bowen. “With the promise that we will play a really competitive JV schedule and even have the opportunity to play some varsity teams.”
Bowen expects about 30 players to come out for the team this season and hopes more come out if they are interested in lacrosse. Playing a more difficult schedule this season, the team hopes to keep progressing to be the best that they can. The plan is to keep the program moving forward and get more girls interested in lacrosse to make a strong team.
“My biggest thing is that our play continues to improve over the course of the season,” said Bowen. “I think if we focus on the process of getting better every day in practice and using games as an opportunity to measure how much we have improved, then hopefully our record will reflect that.”