In this final part of the series, Allie Weinberger forgets about crossing T’s and crosses sticks with women’s lacrosse.
They’re just lucky, you know? Green and loose, with white stripes sweeping across the side, outlined in black. They don’t cling to your skin or ride up your waist. They’re perfect — and that makes them lucky.
So where the hell are they?
Ahh, yes… under the bed. I should have thought of that sooner. When your room looks like Chernobyl, what you’re looking for — what’s most important — is always under the bed. And these particular shorts are important, ’cause I’m on my way to meet Alex Mount and Rachel Klein from the women’s lacrosse team. I’m gonna need all the luck I can get.
I know it sounds silly and superstitious, but athletes often are. And today, for the first time since graduating high school, I am a varsity athlete.
It’s that time. High noon. I shut off the baseball game. Both excited and nervous for what is bound to be an afternoon of sweat and frustration, I make my way over to Nickerson Field and meet up with Alex. I’ve never played lacrosse before, I warn her. Hell, I’ve never been serious about a sport where you don’t use your feet — much less one that requires you to wear a skirt.
“Girls aren’t supposed to play sports,” Alex tells me as we leave the lacrosse locker room in the depths of Case Gymnasium. “Girls aren’t supposed to hit. Even in women’s hockey you see it. It’s guys that are supposed to be ruff and gruff. The girls’ game is about finesse.”
Funny. Not much about the bloody Eagle (stuffed, of course) hanging from a noose outside the locker room says finesse to me.
As we climb out of the basement and walk onto the field, Alex explains to me the differences between the women’s game and the men’s game. This is what I got out of it.
Number One: Men wear pads and helmets because they can full-out body check each other. Girls? Not so much. You can hit your opponent’s stick to knock the ball out, but don’t hold on too long — that’s a foul. Normally, I’m a proponent of letting girls play the same rules boys do. Today, I’m thrilled they don’t.
Number Two: Guys’ sticks have deeper pockets. This gives them a chance that the ball will stay in their stick when said full-body check occurs. A girls’ lacrosse stick must be shallow enough that the ball can be seen above the frame when held parallel to the ground.
I know she told me more, but I am becoming increasingly unsure of how good an idea this whole series is, and the more nervous I get, the less I listen. Sorry Alex.
This is what else I know about women’s lacrosse, despite missing Alex’s more knowledgeable explanations: Women have two more players on the field than the men do; women’s games are generally higher scoring; and women must wear skirts. Right, we already covered that.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wear a skirt, just my lucky shorts, a gray T-shirt and Alex’s No. 3 penny. Oh, and those masks you see lacrosse players wear.
Alex is determined to show me what her and her teammates go through to be a national top-10 team. My severe lack of skill may hinder that goal a bit, but I’m ready to try. We walk over to the brick that was the outer wall of Case. Wall ball time.
Wall ball is simply throwing and catching. Throw the ball against the wall; catch it when it comes back at you. Piece of cake. But wait, how in the world do I throw this thing?
“It’s a pull and push,” Alex tells me. Right. So, as directed, I wrap one hand around the bottom of the stick and the other, my right hand, just above the middle. Alex tells me to snap forward with my top hand while pulling my bottom hand, and thus the bottom of the stick, in toward my body. Ever tried to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time? Yeah, well for someone who spent her whole athletic career with a ball at her feet, it’s kinda like that.
I’m on the lacrosse fast track here, so let’s try it. I can’t pick the ball up with the stick just yet (a skill I manage to master after just a few tries), so Alex puts one in the net of my stick. So push, pull, snap … where’d it go? Oh, in the bushes. Alex didn’t tell me I had to aim too.
Once I got the aiming thing down, I must say I did pretty well. I even caught a few. Before you laugh, know that catching one of these things is an art. Throw away every conventional idea your dad ever taught you about catching. Forget about getting under the ball or keeping it close to your body. To catch a lacrosse ball, you do the exact opposite of when you throw it — you leave your stick outstretched in front of you facing slightly down, and once the ball hits the netting, pull it back fast and cradle it.
And a word to the wise: don’t pull your stick back too soon. Seriously, you’ll have the bump to prove it.
Just when I’m feeling like I could be good at this, Alex throws me a curveball (excuse the cross-sport reference). Because of the way defenders slash your stick and because they steer you away from goal by pressuring ball-side, lacrosse players need to do everything fluently and seamlessly with both hands. I can’t even stir soup with my left hand.
I try it lefty once, fear for Alex’s life and switch back.
So after we finish wall ball, Alex explains to me that it is the first 15 minutes of every lacrosse practice. Follow that up with 15 minutes of stretching and 15 more to work individually on whatever you need to improve on, and you’ve got the pre-practice routine. We get to skip those last two steps. I’m on the fast track, remember?
So Alex and Rachel (you’ll meet her in a paragraph or two) think it’s time I learn how to shoot. They start by explaining the 8-meter shot, or the “free-position shot.” The shooter stands at the hash mark closest to where the foul occurred and the defenders line up behind the fan at least one mark away.
When the whistle blows, the shooter takes two or three quick steps and shoots the ball before any defenders can get to her, hopefully resulting in a goal. It is, when all is said and done, a penalty shot.
But shooting is different than throwing. You want power in your shot, so I’m told to extend my stick as far as I can behind me, lift my elbow, take two quick steps, and pull-push-snap.
Enter Rachel. Rachel Klein is a rookie goalie on the BU team, and she is standing in my goal. Scoring shouldn’t be that hard, right? Little ball, big net and a ridiculous advantage to the shooter (eight meters is really not that far).
My efforts are laughable. Try as I may, I’m lucky to even get one on net, much less in net. Still, Rachel and Alex reassure me that I’m not doing that bad. But I’ve got my eye on another prize.
I’m 5-foot, 2-inches, and call it a Napoleon Complex if you’d like, but I long to look powerful and menacing. And standing just a few steps away from Rachel with a little stick on my shoulder, I realize how menacing goalies must be. Rachel’s stick is three times the size of mine. Her helmet shadows her face just enough to look like she knows something I don’t.
Rachel allows me to climb inside her pads and see what she sees. She shows me the six different positions to catch a shot, and the next thing I know I’m in the line of fire. Ok, maybe “fire” is a bit exaggerated. I guess it was more like spark. And though every shot is mercifully soft, I’m Josh Bard catching Tim Wakefield — it’s just not happening.
Still, I field a couple before Rachael teaches me how to throw. Because it couldn’t be simple — it couldn’t just be the same way I threw before. But no. It’s a new position, a new technique and, surprisingly, a mild success for me.
“You’d be a goalie,” Rachel says encouragingly. And though goalie seems fun, it’s a bit too much pressure for me. And a .600 save percentage (believe it or not, that’s good) can’t help the ego.
The team bus to Dartmouth leaves in 20 minutes, so it’s time to move on to Alex’s forté, defense.
She shows me how to stand — stick up in the air forming a ‘V’ with your other hand — eyes on the girl with ball while still watching your mark. When my mark gets the ball, she tells me, run up, plant my stick on her hip and force her away from goal. I try it, and stumble my way through. Then, if I force ball-side and make her turn around and face her own goal, I have a shot of knocking the ball loose — so she says.
Alex lets me turn her and knock the ball out of the pocket.
And somehow, I foul her.
“You held it down too long,” she explains. “You gotta hit and let go.”
Sadly, it has come time for Alex to leave. And though my “workout” was tiring and fun, Alex isn’t leaving until I know how hard she and her teammates work.
“It’s not unusual to come out around noon and not get done till 6 or 6:30,” she says. After all, there’s weight lifting, running, rehab for injuries, time for individual work and the bane of this lacrosse team — the Aerodyne bikes.
As she leaves, Alex offers up some parting advice.
“The key to lacrosse is stickwork,” she says. “For your first time picking up a stick, you really did do a good job.
“But I would keep working on your stickwork.”
