Running around on the grass, throwing and catching passes, shooting goals and scooping up ground balls—wait, except on the last one, the head of the stick got caught on the dirt and missed. These are all just part of the routine of the Junior Varsity Girls Lacrosse team, but sometimes playing can get impeded by the field.
The team practices and hosts home games on Reunion Field, while the varsity team plays on the Greene Family Field Turf. Reunion is grass, rather than turf, and its rough texture and hard dirt can cause problems with running and playing. For example, the aforementioned dirt patches make for a very hard surface to scoop up ground balls.
This increased difficulty does make for harder training and therefore makes playing on smoother fields easier which can be beneficial for experienced players, however, many members of the JV team are new to the sport, and learning on difficult terrain is hard.
Team member and sophomore Nizaabu Mukiibi said, “It’s already really hard for [new players] to understand cradling and simple things about the sport, so I think doing ground balls on a grass field is a bit harder for them.”
Masters currently has three grass fields and one turf field that have to all be shared by the Varsity Boys and Girls Lacrosse Teams, JV Girls Lacrosse, Varsity and JV Baseball Team, and the track and field team. This means that the Varsity lacrosse teams have to share the coveted turf. While games and meets must be carefully planned as practice space for other teams will be impacted.
For example, Upper School Athletic Assistant Director Mikelle Sacco, who takes part in planning practice and home game locations, said that a track meet takes up the whole track and turf, which forces Varsity lacrosse to be put on other fields.
Things weren’t always like this. The Evans Family Field, which is out of commission after the construction of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, used to be the home field of the now disbanded softball team. It is unclear whether or not this field will be in commission soon. Another issue is the frequent spring showers which forces many teams inside.
“[JV] Lacrosse would get a third of Strayer,” Sacco said.
JV Lacrosse Head Coach Madison Preston said, “There’s very limited stuff we can do in the gym, so that’s a little difficult as a coach, to come up with stuff to do and change my whole game plan because of the weather.”
Despite problems that might occur for sports teams, scheduling for sports is a difficult task with many different pieces that need to be put into the equation.
Preston said, “Our home games have been on Reunion, so I think that it’s a good thing that we practice on grass, since we’re playing on it [but] I know that it sucks because of the weather.”
