Katie decided a while ago that she wanted to try out to be a member of the Enloe Women’s Lacrosse team and has spent the past few months doing informal training sessions at local parks with her team and finally formal training sessions at Ligon Middle School where her coach is stationed.
She was originally going to play for a girls team being formed in Clayton prior to the pandemic but unfortunately COVID-19 blew that idea out of the water but it never stopped her from wanting to try her hand at it.
She’s been working real hard all this time improving her skills and her efforts were rewarded with a place on the varsity team as a sophomore.
Even though she has the heart of an attacker, most of her training has been on defence which is almost entirely all girls new to the team. And even though it’s not necessarily her favourite position, it’s probably the best place to really learn the game and she’s kept a good attitude throughout and her coach has definitely liked her effort.
Even so…I wasn’t expecting her to be named to the starting team in the first game of the season much less play all but 30 seconds of the entire match (two 25-minute halves).
There’s no way round the fact that Millbrook is a very impressive team with a lot of experience throughout their lineup and the first half was not at all pretty but then learning on the job in the heat of battle rarely will be.
That being said…Enloe never stopped competing hard and playing for each other and the eagle on their kit and did their school proud.
Especially in the second half where they still gave up a few goals but they scored their one goal of the game with a little over four minutes remaining and Millbrook never had another chance to score as the girls were determined they were done with giving up goals.
There were a few times in that half where Katie just stood her ground and wasn’t at all interested in letting anyone get past her. When she wasn’t right at the net helping the keeper, she was up at the top of the zone where she decided to be a bit cheeky and take advantage of two Millbrook players just standing around with the ball near them and play had resumed…she reached her stick right through, grabbed the ball, and then took off with them trailing in her wake.
The game also had it’s moments of levity. One of the referees definitely kept noticing her and would bark at her #18 to take position behind a Millbrook player on the set piece after a penalty.
Several times!
They’d not had any time to work out how penalties were taken during training so that was a bit of a learning curve as well but she was rather amused at the referee always seeming to pick on her to get into proper position.
Anywho, those last four minutes looked nothing like the first half and the way the defence came together and locked down the game bodes well for the future.
Katie came off with 30 seconds on the clock and she was well and truly exhausted by the time she got back to the house that night and sacked out on the couch before I finished making dinner. I’m sure her dreams were of her making amazing plays.
I know mine were after sifting through a lot of the pictures of that game… 🙂
