The lacrosse team has gone through changes regarding their program in the past few years. Eva Lawson, a senior who has been playing lacrosse for about four years, has experienced the many ways that the program has improved since she started.
“[In past years,] since we weren’t an MHSAA approved team yet, we didn’t play at actual games during the week. We could only play at drop in games or play dates downstate,” Lawson said.
After a few years of inconsistent practices and games that were not serious, the team got MHSAA approval. This allows them to have more frequent practices, use TCAPS resources and go downstate for actual games.
“This year, we will be allowed to play in the playoffs too and last year we weren’t allowed to do that. It’s more competitive and more of a commitment than last year,” Lawson said.
The team is currently one of the only girls lacrosse teams in Northern Michigan making it hard to have any games here up north.
“Yes, [I think the switch from club to school is positive] because we get to combine between schools, add a lot more people into it and give it more popularity,” Summer Lewandowski, a freshman that has been playing lacrosse for three years said.
Because the team is still new and has little popularity they have been doing a lot of fundraising for things like apparel and backpacks this year as well.
“I feel like things are a lot more organized now and it’s cool that we get to be an official team. I’m hoping the program will be more known about in school sports now that it’s an option because most people don’t know that it’s a sport for girls,” freshman Nora Perreault said.
Additionally, the team has benefited from switches in coaching staff, helping the team become more serious and focusing on more aspects of the sport that they hadn’t practiced before.
“Yes, [we have improved] 100%. We had a bunch of new players that have never played a day of lacrosse in their lives and now were like a good team. We will still drop balls occasionally but we all in all we are a good team. We have also all noticed a really big difference in how we have been playing in games with the [new] coaches,” Perreault said.
