Monika Moore
FSN Reporter
August 15, 2008

August 24 – the date is seared in the minds of most sports-centric individuals in the area as the date of the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.  Until then, sports fans will most likely be talking about little else. However, for one subset of sports-focused people in the D.C Metropolitan area, August 23 and 24 will have a different meaning.  

These dates will be the days of the try-outs for the Capital Girls Lacrosse Club, one of the area’s newest lacrosse clubs, which has experienced rapid success in its short existence.  For Capital Girls Lacrosse, these dates will be the beginning of another chapter of a program that has already made a name for itself within the club lacrosse community and whose alumni are quickly filling spots on rosters for Division I college programs across the country.

Capital Girls Lacrosse began just three years ago when a group of parents who were surveying the landscape of club team options for high school athletes decided that they wanted to create another opportunity for their daughters to participate in club lacrosse.  According to Club President Mary Newhouse, “parents [whose daughters] had been involved in [the] Future Elite [club team] got together and decided that we needed to provide an outlet for our girls to play competitive club lacrosse so we met in living rooms and put the club together.”  

From these beginnings, Capital Lacrosse was born and molded as a non-profit organization that is run by parent volunteers.  Participants are from both public and private schools in the D.C. Metro area, and last season, the club had members from over thirty area high schools.

In its first year, the program had three teams -- one for rising freshmen, one for rising sophomores, and one for rising juniors.  Last year, however, the organization decided that since there was so much interest in the program, it would add an additional team for each age group, resulting in a total of six teams -- the teams for each age group being divided into a Blue Team and an Orange Team.  

According to Newhouse, the program does not offer teams for rising seniors because “for the most part, [the program’s rising] seniors are committed [to colleges] by the time they hit the summer before their senior year.  That is why most of them [participate] -- because they want to play in college.  The biggest goal of the club sport is to get college coaches to look at them.”

Each season both new and returning players have to try-out for the program.  In selecting players to represent the club each year, the coaches look for a number of things.  According to Sarah Aschenbach, who will continue to serve as one of the freshmen team coaches for the upcoming season, many qualities are important for those individuals hoping to make one of the squads each year. “Obviously lacrosse skill is important. Stick-skill, speed, strength, and gamesense play a part, and we are of course looking for dedication and love of the sport.”

Although the program is relatively new, it has already experienced a number of highlights, the biggest of which occurred this past June.  “For the first time, a major women’s lacrosse tournament was held in the DC area, which was called the Capitol Cup,” Newhouse explains.

“It was run by the college coaches and it was held up at the soccerplex in Germantown, [Maryland]. It was the first time they have ever had lacrosse played there.  It was a three-day tournament with hundreds of teams. Our 2009 Blue team won the first Capitol Cup in their division.”

“And the other thing it did for us is that [our organization] staffed the whole tournament, meaning that we provided the field marshal for every game that was played.  We’ve come from an organization with just three teams and parents sitting in a living room to where we can now staff a tournament. Every one of our parents volunteered. I think this just shows what type of club we have.”

Winning the tournament was a huge milestone for the 2009 Blue Team and the program itself, and the team’s triumph was perhaps sweeter due to the fact that the team faced adversity during the three-day tournament before taking home top honors.  On the second day of play, the team lost to the Chesapeake Bay Region’s CC Lax team that the team had defeated earlier in the season.  

“That loss to CC Lax was probably the best thing that happened to us because the next day we came back and nobody could touch us,” Katie McLaughlin, one of the 2009 Blue Team’s co-head coaches explains.  “We were catching every ball, running to our passes, and scoring. The team play was phenomenal. And if you look at our roster, we already had a number of players with armbands on – meaning they were already committed to colleges and they were still giving it 110 percent.”

In addition to winning a tournament of the size and caliber of the Capitol Cup, the success that Capital Girls Lacrosse is experiencing is also evidenced by the number of its alumni who have committed to play or are currently playing college lacrosse.  From the program’s 2008 Team, seventeen alumni will be playing at colleges across the country, including the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stanford, and Richmond.  Fifteen players from the program’s Class of 2007 played their first year of college lacrosse last season.

Capital Lacrosse team members credit the assistance, knowledge, and support of their club team coaches in helping club members navigate the college recruiting world and teaching them to market themselves to top programs. “The coaches definitely helped us throughout the whole thing, telling us when we should start to email people, what we should say, what questions we should ask, and just how to play in the tournaments,” says Megan Dunleavy, 2009 Blue Team member and current Robinson high school senior. Dunleavy has committed to play for the University of Virginia.

The players also credit the caliber of their teammates in helping attract notice from college coaches and in helping them to lift their game to the level required to compete in college.  According to Madeleine Irwin, 2010 Blue Team member and Annandale High School junior, playing for Capital Lacrosse “is kind of like a lacrosse classroom because [your teammates] will play differently [than you do] and will hear what the coaches say differently. When you come together from all these different schools, it is kind of like bringing everyone’s different piece to the puzzle. You mix it up and see what you get out of it.”  

The coaches concur that it is the caliber of the players as a collective unit and the camaraderie the young women share that has helped the program attain such impressive heights in such a short period of time.  “It is just as important [to my players] that they know that their friend is going to their dream school, as it is that they go to their dream school.  That is something that I think is really unique and just comes from these girls being together for as long as they have,” McLaughlin says.

Aside from the thrill of participating in major tournaments and garnering attention from college coaches, according to Newhouse, the players get many more benefits from the program. “The first thing is that they are playing lacrosse at the highest level which does wonderful things in improving their lacrosse skills. The second thing they get out of it is camaraderie. They are traveling together to these tournaments and they spend such a concentrated amount of time together that they are extraordinarily close.  They see what it is like to play on a high school level team and how you need to have your team working together. And third is just the friendships. I see that when these girls play for their high school teams and play against each other.”

Lacrosse was last played as an Olympic full medal sport exactly 100 years ago in 1908 when Canada took home the gold medal in London.  Although lacrosse is no longer one of the panoply of sports on display in Beijing right now, it is clear that there is a very good reason to be talking about it. 
    
Try-outs:
August 23 – Class of 2012 Team (9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Episcopal High School)
August 24 – Class of 2011 and 2010 Teams (1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Episcopal High School)

For more information about try-outs and the Capital Girls Lacrosse program, visit the organization’s Web site:  http://www.capitallacrosseclub.com