Sophomore Molly Gasperi loves lacrosse. She loves playing double headers. She loves her teammates that she has grown close to. And she loves that she has improved her defensive game since she joined the team last year. But next year, Gasperi might not get to play the sport that she loves. Because this year the girls’ lacrosse team only has 27 players. Other teams, like Blue Valley and St. Theresa’s, have the necessary number of girls in their program — around 40. And if they don’t recruit players for next season, they might be forced to call it quits.
The small amount of players has resulted in girls having to play back-to-back games. Senior team captains Jocelyn Worner and India D’Ortona are both frustrated by this.
“When you’ve got varsity players playing in the JV game and that JV game is first, you have a lot of people running for the whole length of both games,” D’Ortona said. “And come time for the last quarter of the varsity game you’re just exhausted.”
The lack of players hasn’t always been a problem. Last year, the girls’ lacrosse team had around 40 players. Worner believes one of the main reasons for the lack in participants is the fact that girls’ lacrosse is a club, not a school sponsored sport.
Both Worner and D’Ortona feel that there aren’t as many dedicated players this year as there were in previous years. Some of the girls have been to as little as three practices so far this season.
“The girls who are playing this year are either very dedicated to the success of the team and are playing 110 percent, or are spread too thin,” head coach Jill McDonald said. “[They are] over-committed to too many extracurricular activities, trying to do everything.”
Because the lacrosse team is a club team and not a school-sponsored sport, the team is made up of girls from other schools, which the captains agree has helped in recruitment. The other girls come from Shawnee Mission North, Shawnee Mission South and Bishop Miege. The diversity of the team and the low practice attendance have made it difficult for the team to bond as a whole, according to Worner and D’Ortona.
Despite the lack of players, the team has still had success. Varsity is fifth out of seven teams and JV is sixth out of nine teams in their Kansas City Metro Girls Lacrosse Association league. Worner accredits their success to the forced JV/Varsity mergence. Having varsity players on the JV team has upped their skill-level.
The girls practice every Monday through Thursday for about two hours. Worner says the she and the other captains give McDonald suggestions of what they think the team needs to work on and she bases practice around that. Because there are so little girls at practice, it’s hard for the team to improve as a whole. However, according to Gasperi, there are girls who are very dedicated and work hard for the benefit of their team.
“There’s a continuous group of people that show up to practice,” Gasperi said. “You can tell that those people are the ones that want to be there and want to play. But it kind of sucks because the people who don’t really put effort into practice still get to play in the games just as much as the people who go to practice and work hard.”
The Kansas City area has been developing in terms of women’s lacrosse over the past few years. When Worner first joined East’s lacrosse team four years ago, there were only four other teams from the area. The girls would have to travel to places such as Omaha, Des Moines and Wichita. Now there are around 17 teams, including schools from Olathe, Blue Valley and Lee’s Summit.
“It’s significantly more home games and less traveling which is good,” Worner said. “But it also kind of stinks because those away games were tournaments and we got to play a lot more, which, allowed for team bonding.”
Looking ahead, both the captains and McDonald are looking forward to larger incoming classes. They are looking to recruit players from other schools as well as from the local Prairie Village lacrosse teams.
“The girls, parents and coaches have all worked really hard to recruit new players to team this year,” McDonald said. “We got some really great new first year players this year and we are hopeful that they will talk about their success and enjoyment of the game to friends and bring them next year. We need girls from other schools to embrace the sport like East has.”
D’Ortona says that lacrosse is the kind of sport you can catch onto after just a few weeks of playing, so the team is looking for girls of all skill-levels to join next year. Gasperi, along with other girls on the team, have been making an effort to reach out and contact any who might be interested in the team.
“Anyone at all who is new is welcome to play,” Gasperi said. “We just really want to have a team. It’d be really disappointing if we didn’t get to have one.”
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