In response to requests from students and parents, Athletics Director David Collicutt is exploring uncharted territory by creating a lacrosse club that will practice on Booth Field twice a week, play games on the weekends, and possibly become an official School team in the future.
According to Collicutt, Marlborough has not had a lacrosse team in the past because last year, out of the 580 schools in the CIF-SS (California Interscholastic Federation, Southern Section), only 55 had girls lacrosse teams, none of which are in the Sunshine League. All Marlborough sports teams play in the Sunshine League, except for Varsity Golf and Varsity Water Polo, which play in the Ocean League.
According to Collicutt, lacrosse is much more popular on the East Coast, and most students in Los Angeles don’t take it up at a young age as they do soccer or basketball.
Lacrosse, much like hockey, is played differently based on the sex of the athletes; boys’ lacrosse is a contact sport and girls’ lacrosse involves more refined strategy and technique.
In early January, Alex ’14 and Kathryn ’14 brought the idea of a lacrosse club at school to Collicutt, as a means of gauging the interest of the student body in hopes of it one day becoming a team.
“It can’t be a School team, like a Marlborough Varsity Lacrosse team, because we don’t know how much participation there will be,” Alex said.
In order to further excite people about lacrosse, experts from Starz Lacrosse came to the School on Feb. 1 during Fitness Week to explain the game to students and possibly scope out any raw natural talent. The girls learned basic lacrosse terminology (which is similar to that of soccer) and how to pass using lacrosse sticks.
Sophie ’14 attended the Fitness Week event and said she is now considering joining the club team.
“I wanted to try it because my little brother plays lacrosse and it looks really fun. I thought, ‘Why not?’ ” Sophie said.
