Tonight is the final game for Enloe women’s lacrosse team this season and it’s certainly been a memorable one. The thing that really stands out is that these young ladies have worked so hard at training before the season and during it and they’ve definitely shown a fair bit of improvement in skills despite losing quite a few talented seniors to graduation.
The results and the standings may not show it but if you watched their matches through this spring, you’ll have seen that these girls gave each game everything they had and then some. They played hard for their school and the pride in wearing that kit but most of all they played hard for each other.
I think Katie put it best when she said they weren’t her teammates…they were her sisters. And she meant every word of that.
Most of the season has found her on defence protecting Miss Bronson who was serving her first year in net as goaltender and Katie was in net for one game when Miss Bronson went down to injury prior to the opening face-off.
She’s never really been a fan of playing on defence even though she’s very well suited for it. Her low centre of gravity coupled with an absolute unwillingness to be moved when she plants her feet to block an attacking player’s move to the net are key to why she was trusted to be back there for most of the year.
But her heart has always been on wanting to be part of the attack and last game she got her wish to be on attack for the first time in her two years of playing when she was moved to the forward corps for the final two minutes of the game.
So you can imagine my surprise when the Leesville Road announcer (who is easily the best stadium announcer in the conference by far!) called her name to the starting lineup much earlier than we’d ever heard her name called before. And on attack, no less!
That was definitely a double-take moment to be sure!
But that wasn’t the only surprise in store.
Fourteen minutes into the first half, Enloe finally got a chance to go on the attack with a nice breakout from the defence through the midfield and Katie ends up receiving the ball behind the net and has a few seconds to consider her options. Everyone else was covered so she decides to turn in and challenge her defender and makes it into the shooting arc in spite of her defender’s best efforts and draws a foul and free position.
This is where she stands on a curved line eight meters from goal with the girl who fouled her supposed to be standing four meters behind her as she gets a free run in toward the net.
After a bit of confusion where Katie was re-positioned by the referee from on top of the arc to a more lateral edge-on position flanked by two Leesville Road players on either side, she finally takes her run in toward the goalie.
She is attacked from the right side by Miss Ashlyn Sarmiere (one of two Sarmiere sisters on that team who are supremely talented and seemingly score at will) who gets to her just as she releases her shot above Miss Ashlyn’s stick.
Katie said she closed her eyes as she shot (not unusual for attacking players, surprisingly enough) and the ball goes out of sight for a moment but based on the trajectory of her shot and where the ball ends up in the net, the only way it could have possibly gone in was bouncing off the crossbar in a classic *BAR DOWN* shot.
How it went in really didn’t matter to her. Nor did the rest of the game as she’d admit later.
But she’d vindicated her selection on attack by scoring her first ever lacrosse goal which was the first goal for Enloe in this game.
She didn’t even hear the announcement of the goal or me screaming like mad in the press box as she was heading in toward the goal and after it became apparent that she’d scored when I could see the ball toward the back of the net through an effective 400mm telephoto lens and her jumping for joy.
“Enloe Eagles goal scored by number 18 Kathryn Williams with a very excited photographer here in the press box!”
I’ll never forget her being mobbed by her teammates (sorry, sisters!) and all of them beginning the triumphant walk back toward the centre of the field after a goal has been scored.
At the moment, I thought it’d be hard to imagine how I could have been prouder of her.
That’s when we come to the surprise in this story that really isn’t a surprise if you truly know her heart. At the start of the second half, Katie had returned to her customary position on defence. Knowing how much she enjoyed being on attack and how much she wanted to actually play up there all season long, it was initially quite a surprise seeing her back on defence.
And then the penny dropped.
There was only one reason I could imagine why she’d switch back for the second half. Miss Heidi and Miss Kanah and Katie have been together through most of their school years from Kindergarten onward and this was Miss Heidi’s last year as she’s graduating in a bit over a month.
Miss Heidi has worked so hard for the entire season and hadn’t scored her own goal and I suspected Katie had switched places with her to give her one more half of play to pot her goal. And goodness knows she came close to it several times and had the field not been rendered treacherous by the rain, she might well have gotten on the scoreboard.
Katie admitted that was her motivation later on and has tried downplaying how special her sacrifice for Miss Heidi’s sake was but anyone who knows her true heart and character shouldn’t be surprised that she’d be looking out for those she cares for rather than herself.
It’s who she is at heart and I couldn’t be prouder of one of the most special human beings I’ve ever known even if Katie doesn’t want to see it that way now. But given time and the wisdom that comes of it, I’m sure she will understand when she needs to.
The game ended as they all have through this season with the Enloe girls running out on the field mobbing Miss Bronson and tapping her on her helmet with their sticks before returning to the touch line for the best tradition in sport where they line up and congratulate each other on a hard fought game.
This team may not have won a game this season and been blown out in most of them but this band of sisters who have walked and trained and fought for their school and their shirt and each other on the field all season long won something far greater that will be much more meaningful to them as they spread their wings and allow the winds to touch them and lift them as Eagles in spirit and heart.
They played the game their way and grew to be a very close-knit group that I dearly hope will stay together in the years to come.
That’s worth far more than wins in the standings and scores that were forgotten in the coming together after the final horn has sounded.
