With the girls lacrosse inaugural season now in the books and with a finishing record of 5-5, the team prepares for its second year of existence. This year, the girls lacrosse team will add a varsity team and faces some discussion regarding the addition of a helmet requirement to the girls game.

Last year, MHS only had a JV team, so this will be the first year that MHS will have a varsity team along with the JV team.

“With the addition of a varsity team, there will be tryouts but no cuts. The tryouts will determine what level each individual girl is at,” said Head Coach Caroline Gully.

Now that there are two teams, the girls have seen an increase in participation in this year’s tryouts.

“Having a varsity team this year will definitely improve participation in girls lacrosse because it gives more girls an opportunity to play and improve, as opposed to having everyone on one team,” said Junior Cara Schaul.

Besides the addition of a varsity team, there may also be the addition of a new rule, which would mandate the use of helmets.

Some players are for the new rule while others have their concerns.

“Helmets are very important because I got a concussion, and I think this would lead to more protection,” said Sophomore Skylar Lucich, who was captain of the JV team last year. “Also, girls don’t have much room to be physical, but I don’t want the game to be too physical. Right now, in our game, we aren’t allowed to be as physical compared to the boys.”

And this is why Junior Hannah Buscher is against the rule.

“I strongly oppose the helmet rule because I feel that this will motivate girls to be even more physical,” she said. “I also believe, as much as this might protect your head, this may lead to more vulnerability to other parts of the body.”

Right now, the girls don’t wear much padding.  Therefore, if helmets encourage more physical contact, that leaves the players potentially more vulnerable to injury, particularly to body parts not protected by equipment.

Despite no clear ruling on the use of helmets yet, the lacrosse team continues to prepare for the season by working on fundamentals.

“Some goals we have are handling close game situations. This can lead us to handling some close games that we weren’t familiar with last season,” said Lucich

Fundamental skills are key to every sport when it comes to success, and in this case, for the girls lacrosse team, an area of improvement that many of the girls can agree on is stick work– working on keeping the ball in the “pocket” or net of the stick and being able to control the ball without dropping it.

“I think we all can become more confident and more offensively minded and can establish fundamental skills stronger,” said Buscher. “Part of this comes with building an atmosphere where we can become more serious, receive and accept constructive criticism and become better players overall.”

By the end of last season, many of the players already saw significant improvement.

“An area of improvement that I saw last year as the season went on was that the girls began to build confidence in their skill, which led to improvement on the field,” said Gully.  “Also, I saw that as the season went on, our girls were very good at draw controls on a consistent basis.”

Draw controls are when the ball is dropped in the middle of the field in between two sticks– one stick from one team, one stick from the other team. The ball is tossed between the two players in the air and whoever comes up with the ball earns possession.

According to some of the players, such improvements helped last season end successfully while setting up the second year well.

“Last year we exceeded our expectations going 5-5,” said Schaul. “Now this year it’s time to get serious and get better and beat the more established teams.”