One of the most cliché and overused statements in sports is that a player plays “for the love of the game.” However, this holds true for the women’s club lacrosse team who has struggled due to lack of participation this season. The team continues to go out and play in every game and tournament on its schedule, even if the team knows it will have to forfeit the game because it only has nine players able to commit so far.
“We are struggling this year to get enough girls to fill a team, and to field a full team you need 12 players on the field,” Courtney Sparr, a sophomore in Mechanical Engineering and a member of the team, said. “So what ends up happening is we get ten girls that are able to play and we have to forfeit and borrow players from the other team.”
Despite the lack of participation, the team continues to go out and play every weekend, including this upcoming weekend when the team will travel to Appalachian State on Saturday and Duke on Sunday. But even in the likely event the team is unable to field a full team, the team will still go out and give 100 percent in the game.
“We just want to go out there, play our hardest and have as much fun as we can, and that is what we are all about,” team captain Erica Benedetto, a senior in psychology, said. “We are a club team, we aren’t Division-I. We don’t practice everyday.”
With the struggles the team has had over the course of the season fielding a full team, it is always looking for new members who are interested in playing and would be committed to playing, no matter their level of experience.
“We are trying to find players that can commit themselves to games,” Sparr said. “If you have never touched a stick in your life we would be happy to teach you how to play lacrosse.”
Recently the team has been able to recruit a few more members. With that, the team hopes to implement more strict rules involving practice attendance in order to make the team better.
“We are trying to be more serious and have people more committed,” Benedetto said. “In the past we were laid back. If you couldn’t come to practice it was okay because we didn’t have enough girls to play. But we are getting more girls and next season we are going to make practice a requirement. If you don’t have a certain attendance you can’t play in the games.”
With lacrosse being more popular up north compared to the south, the players understand the lack of participation. However, they still want to try and reach out to as many people as they can and teach them the game that they love.
“We are a club team and lacrosse is not as big hear as it is up north, where I am from. But we are trying to open people’s eyes and promote lacrosse,” Benedetto said. “We have a lot of players who come out with no experience but are athletic and able to pick it up pretty easy. We just love it and want to show people how to play.”