Women's lacrosse team seeks to receive varsity status

By Steve Hare
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Women's Lacrosse Team front row (l-r) Melissa Warner, Terri Lussier, Casey Woodard, Kristin Aylward, and Jess Rodriguez. Back row (l-r) Coach Kevin Vail, Liz Wheatley, Kim Lafreniere, Stephanie Cooper, Melissa Picard, Julie Stratton, Amanda Nelson, and Abbie Russell. Missing, Daniela Argentino. The team is currently 0-2 vs. Division I teams.

The Norwich women's lacrosse team may have the campus presence of a varsity team, but the truth of the matter is they are a club team that has to begin planning and training for their spring season in early October.

The team must raise all of the money that a varsity program would need in order to participate in games and travel expenses without any financial support from the athletic department.

"We do all of our own fund raising; we hosted many game shows in Dole auditorium as well as kissing booths and auctioning off dates with our players. We also held a spring dance," said Melissa Warner, 22, a senior business major from Northfield Vt., "We have to pay to rent vans so we can get to the games; we have to pay for our referees along with our sticks and uniforms."

Aside from all of the fund raising, the team also managed to find time to practice and even find a coach in Kevin Vail.

Kevin Vail acted as the conditioning coach for the rugby team; when their season was abruptly ended, he found himself with some free time.

"I was in the Mill one night and one of the girls approached me and asked if I would condition them. I had nothing to do this semester, so I was more then willing. At first, I acted as an advisor and conditioning coach; as time passed, I got to learn the game pretty well, and I talked to the girls, and they wanted me to step into more of a coaching roll," said Kevin Vail, head coach for women's lacrosse.

The impact of having a head coach has had a positive affect on a club sport which hopes to eventually becoming varsity.

"Coach Vail has definitely been a motivating factor, because he dedicates so much time to the team, and we feel that we don't want to let him go," said Casey Woodard, 20, sophomore architecture major from Frericksburg, Va.

The team shows true dedication to achieving the common goal of one day becoming a varsity sport.

"We all want this program to succeed; that's why we do all of the fund raising and practice so hard. We only have 13 girls on the team, so we are all very dedicated to each other in the sense that we don't want to let each other down," Woodard said.

"The girls are in excellent shape, and their skills are good, but game knowledge is where they are lacking," Vail said.

The team has already played two games this year; although they were not victorious against division one teams Yale and Brown, they improved drastically from last year as well as the previous week.

"Each game we improve so much, within a week we have improved dramatically, and that's just from playing games. We learn techniques from the other teams; it helps us improve a lot," said Melissa Picard, 22, a senior nursing major from Northfield, Vt.

The improvements that the dedicated members of the women's lacrosse team have made are obvious in the number of games that they have scheduled.

"Last year we only played one game, and this year we have eight games scheduled. The reason we were able to schedule so many more games this year is due to the fundraising that we have done this year," Warner said.

It is obvious that the girls make financial and time commitments to participate on a team that requires an extreme amount of dedication.

"I love playing lacrosse; I just love the game, and I also like being a part of such a close and dedicated team. We are all working toward the common goal and that's to see the program become varsity someday," said Kristin Aylward, 20, a sophomore biology major from Northfield, Vt.

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