The fall has been jam packed since the day the girls stepped on campus in the end of August. We had a few main goals for this fall and they were: community service, fundamentals, recruiting and marketing the program. I believe for just one semester, we have done a great job with all four of those goals.
It was important for us, especially with not having a fall ball season, to get the girls actively involved in the local community. Our team jumped right into this head on and partook in numerous different community service activities. Some of those activities included: Al’s Run, Susan G. Komen Race for the cure, Blue & Gold Fund volunteer, Thanksgiving donation drive, collected breast cancer donations at Women’s soccer game, Native American Lacrosse clinic, and Trick or Treat event at Men’s Soccer game for the local youth. This picture above is from the very first weekend on campus at the Al’s Run.
Our next goal of “fundamentals,” was our on-field goal for this fall. In September, we hosted tryouts for all Marquette students interested in trying out for the team. Five of these girls made it and it increased our team size from 10 players to 15. We knew in order to start the program from scratch, we had to start our lax skills from scratch as well.
Only having 15 girls made it very hard to scrimmage, but made it very convenient to work on our stick skills and small sided fundamentals. These are not always the most fun, but they are the absolute most important aspect to the game. Our girls never complained and were always willing to do whatever the coaches asked of them.
Recruiting needed to be a main focus for both the coaches and the team this fall. I think that was evident when we are trying to practice with 15 girls. With the hard work of the team and the coaches, we were able to sign 17 girls who will be attending Marquette starting in 2012. We are thrilled with the class we have coming in and are working on the next class after that. Recruiting is a never ending job, but we know we have a great product to offer and we are happy to do it.
Lastly, even though the lacrosse world is small, we had to focus on marketing our program and getting our name out there. We created a Facebook Page, a Twitter account @muathletics_lax and made many a video to help promote the program and let people know what we are all about. We did our best to have a lot of fun with the facebook page and the videos we made. You can find them online and I think it is a great way to get to know our players.
It has been a really fun fall for Marquette Lacrosse. We are working very hard to create a sound program from the ground up, but the hard work has been fun work. After this first fall, we are confident that the players and staff are fully committed to getting the program off the ground. We are looking forward to a similar spring with a lot of practice and hard work to come.
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