India Thieriot
Reporter

The soccer season is moving from spring to winter next year, leaving a spot for a new sport in the spring roster.

“A lot of schools in our league are looking to add lacrosse,” Athletic Director Elena De Santis said. “If there is enough interest, we’d love to support it.”

Unlike the men’s sport, women’s lacrosse is played with traditionally- strung net sticks rather than mesh and does not allow body-checking.

Freshman Jemima Scott, who has been playing lacrosse for four years, says she’s hopeful enough students will express interest for the sport to include it in next year’s sports schedule.

“I’m trying to get the idea of playing into people’s thoughts,” Scott said. “I’m always asking people if they’d be interested, and I keep mentioning it to my friends.”

De Santis sent out a survey to the student body and until enough students respond and express the interest to play lacrosse, adding the sport is not set-in-stone.

“We’re not quite there yet,” De Santis said. “I’ll send the survey out again, and hopefully we could get about 25 people who definitely want to play. Unless for some reason we had a huge influx of people, we’d start with one team instead of splitting into a varsity and JV.”

Students who previously played soccer in the spring now have the option of playing an additional spring sport as well.

“I have played lacrosse before but because I was playing soccer, I dropped club lacrosse to play soccer full time,” junior Izzie Panasci, who plans on playing lacrosse next year, said.

Soccer player who plan to join the lacrosse team may have an easier time learning the sport as there are many similarities between the two games.

“You use hand-eye coordination for both sports and you need the same kind of agility that you do in soccer, so I think they will complement each other really well,” Panasci said. “Having the opportunity to play soccer and lacrosse might keep people in better shape.” Players with all experience levels are invited to join the team.

“It’d be great if we had experience, but there are a lot of new teams joining the league as well,” De Santis said. “With other schools having brand new programs, they’ll probably be a lot of inexperienced players.”

Along with the possibility of offering a clinic for players with less experience, Scott is also willing to help out newcomers to the sport.

“I would definitely be open to tutoring new or inexperienced players,” Scott said. De Santis is already looking for possible coaches.

“We do have one faculty member who is coaching middle school basketball right now, and I know she played lacrosse,” De Santis said. “She’d definitely be first on my list.”

Having a new sport will add diversity to the athletic department, especially lacrosse which is a particularly bonding sport, according to Scott.

Despite unofficial plans, Scott is still optimistic about the team’s potential.

“Hopefully people will be committed to it, at least making an effort in order to get better,” Scott said.