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Jennifer Eames and Julie Noyes LaFramboise Chapman answered, “Twenty-two years.” She then smiled and added, “And how old are you?” Her defender replied, “Nineteen.” The Atlanta Women's Lacrosse Club competed at South of the Border as the only invited post-collegiate club. A team of lawyers, graduate students, teachers, or computer specialists with an age range of 17-40 took the field, wooden sticks in hand, to play the game they love with a style and grace that embodies the truest spirit of the women's game. Beyond being simply a post-collegiate club who enjoys playing together, the Atlanta Women's Lacrosse Club is a group of lacrosse advocates. Taking the field in North Carolina that weekend were, among others, the head of Georgia high school lacrosse, nine local or district rated officials, the majority of the executive committee of the Southeastern Women's Lacrosse League, half of the high school coaches in Georgia, former high school and college All-Americans, college NCAA champions, and complete beginners in the sport. In 1993, AWLC began when Lacy Frazer and Traci Hudson, NCAA champions from the University of Maryland, and Rena Whitehouse, to whom almost all women’s lacrosse in the Southeast can be traced back, decided to start a post-collegiate club. Their goal was simply to have fun and be able to play. “Living in Atlanta, where the sport didn’t exist, our first thought was, ‘Cool, there are three of us, and we only need nine more to play,’” Whitehouse explains. They advertised in various Atlanta publications, and soon had enough women who had moved to the rapidly growing city who knew lacrosse, or beginners who wanted to learn. With the team assembled, they encountered an immediate obstacle. “We didn’t have anyone to play against,” Whitehouse says. “We drove four hours minimum to games, to play against clubs at UNC, Duke, or Vanderbilt.” “We realized we would have to build our own competition.” This realization led to a shift in purpose for the Atlanta club - no longer could they just ‘have fun and play.’ AWLC grew to become the single most influential developmental resource for the sport in the Southeast. AWLC players began holding players’ clinics at schools like Emory, the University of Georgia, and Florida State to help create clubs for them to play against. Through US Lacrosse, an umpires’ certification clinic was created in Atlanta to develop that necessity for growth. Within a few years, college clubs were established from South Carolina to Alabama. The fledgling clubs were run by full-time undergraduates who raised money to play through bake sales and car washes. As student club leaders graduated and torches changed hands, the next year’s leadership was not sure how to contact each other to schedule games. In the summer of 1998, Whitehouse created the Southeastern Women’s Lacrosse League to address this concern. The SWLL provides a structure for college and post-collegiate lacrosse in the Southeast that is unprecedented in the Deep South. SWLL administrators, the majority of which are AWLC members, keep updated contact lists of information for women’s lacrosse throughout the Southeast, and schedule a regular season and championship for the college clubs across the region. “Until we became members of the league, we had trouble keeping a team together,” says Liz Fisher at the University of South Carolina. “Players wanted to be able to compete and SWLL gave our team that opportunity.” Another offshoot of the Atlanta club is the phenomenal growth of high school girls’ lacrosse in Atlanta. In three years, the sport went from non-existent at that level, to having eight teams across the city this spring. The majority has either a head or assistant coach who is a part of AWLC. A “little sister” to the SWLL, the Georgia Girls Lacrosse League was formed this year, with all eight high schools in the league. Julie Noyes LaFramboise is AWLC’s center, president, and the NCAA DIII career goal-scoring leader for Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She also serves as the head of girl's youth and high school lacrosse in GA, SC, and AL. “In the beginning, the biggest problems facing high school lacrosse in Atlanta was first support from the schools and, second, the availability of coaches,” she explains. “Once we were able to convince the administrators that our sport was safe, we were able to provide an avenue for many of the young girls in the South to enjoy the game.” “Down here, we are teaching group of teenagers a sport that they previously only could liken to the five minute segment of men's lacrosse in ‘American Pie.’ Now, to see them catching, throwing and their excitement when they score a goal in their first game makes all of the time and sacrifices of wearing ten hats in the lacrosse world well worth the effort,” LaFramboise explains. At the Westminster School in Atlanta this spring, the girls’ lacrosse team had eighty-five girls try out. In the Deep South, lacrosse is viewed as a cutting edge team sport, and girls are flocking to it in unimaginable numbers. In this region, the majority of administrative and coaching positions are held on a volunteer basis. “The biggest limitation of AWLC is that we all are stretched so thin,” says Susanne Bull. Bull is a Penn State grad, treasurer for the SWLL, and vice president of the Atlanta club. Bringing the same order to Southeastern lacrosse that she does to AWLC’s defense, which she runs from the point, Bull handles finances and schedules all games for the SWLL. This includes a schedule of games for a recent Atlanta officials’ clinic that, due to the time constraints of full-time work, she completed during the Super Bowl. “As a lacrosse player growing up in Baltimore, it sounds elementary, but it never entered my mind that games have to be scheduled, or officials have to be scheduled. My job was to show up and play. Now, we’re scheduling the vast majority of the games in the Southeast. By moving South, I was given a totally different perspective on the game,” she says. Whitehouse agrees. “For me, the thing that sets this region apart from others is the work that goes into making this game.” Parents, and college and high school students, line their own fields, and are often solely responsible for raising the money to pay officials, organizing their teams, and finding equipment in an area where it cannot be bought in stores. “Because we have to work so hard, I think there is a real sense of ownership,” Whitehouse adds. This feeling transcends beyond the leadership in AWLC - the growth has been so rapid that high school and college students have to work as hard to play the game as their post-collegiate administrators. “I don’t think the college students in the SWLL give themselves enough credit,” Bull says. “I’m not sure I could have done what they do when I was in college. People here don’t take anything for granted. They work for something as simple as a field to play on.” Out of necessity, the spirit of giving to lacrosse on which AWLC was founded is passed down through the colleges and high schools. “That spirit is infectious,” Whitehouse explains, after watching the University of Georgia, one of the strongest SWLL teams, “coach” a first-year club from Furman University, packed with beginners, through their first game. The two schools were scheduled to play against each other, as a part of a recent Atlanta officials’ clinic. “Where else can you show up at a playday, and see a team coaching their competitors?” she asks. Jess Giddings, the president of the club at the University of Georgia, points out the direct influence of AWLC on their own on-field coaching. “I remember that when I first started playing for UGA, and everyone talked about AWLC. They said how great the players were, but more importantly they said to listen to them on the field. Atlanta players are famous, at UGA, for giving advice in the middle of the game.” A value that began to “build their own competition” now sets the tone for women’s lacrosse throughout their region. One time a year, the South of the Border Tournament shows a different side of the Atlanta Club, and it has become the one weekend that the “core” of the club comes together to play the game to which they give so much. “It’s the one competitive time in our season,” Whitehouse explains. Playing against varsity teams from across the country, there is no obligation to teach opposing teams the finer points of lacrosse, to officiate the games, or to run the tournament. AWLC shows up, in line with the original intentions of their founders, to “have fun and play.” For this weekend, across the Deep South, because of AWLC’s participation in the South of the Border, women’s lacrosse grinds to a near halt. No high school games are scheduled - the coaches are gone - and some college games are cancelled or rescheduled due to a lack of officials. Still, this weekend is vitally important to the Atlanta Club. Bull loves the chance she has, for one weekend, to remember how lacrosse is elsewhere. “The South of the Border is a way to stay in touch with the lacrosse that we know. It keeps us in touch with our roots.” Those roots are cultivated in even the youngest player on Atlanta’s South of the Border team. Seventeen-year-old attack wing Amanda Lanzl is the daughter of National Lacrosse Hall-of-Famer and former US National Team captain Connie Burgess Lanzl. “There is no lacrosse in Upstate South Carolina where we've lived for the last three years,” Connie Lanzl explains, “and Amanda did not want to let drop a sport she had grown to love in Philadelphia.” Even on their one competitive weekend, AWLC players cannot shake their other roles. Following watching Duke play, debates abound for a slew of high school coaches about new cradling techniques. A handful of officials note calls - or no calls - on defensive “tagging” - a technique that is generally not practiced at the level they normally officiate. Traci Hudson, one of the original three players who began the club, gives pointers to Navy’s defense during their game. Connie Lanzl points out that “On the [Atlanta] club there is such cooperation, enthusiasm and respect that the rest of the organization almost naturally adopts the same tone and willingness to help as much as possible.” Typically supportive of each other’s efforts, between Sunday’s games, AWLC stopped by another field where Whitehouse was attempting her District umpires’ rating, only to find out that she was not scheduled to be on the field again until AWLC’s next game on the other side of campus. Marti Fessenden, an attack player who picked up the game through the Atlanta club at the age of 36, joked with Whitehouse. “We showed up to cheer on the ref, and you’re not even out there! We were all ready to yell out ‘Great call, ref! Way to see that 3-seconds!’” Susie Ganzenmuller, running the clinic, laughed along with Whitehouse. “Rena, who else has a club that shows up to cheer on an official?!” Though they lacked the young legs and consistent practices of many of their collegiate competitors, on the playing field, the Atlanta Women’s Lacrosse Club left the South of the Border Tournament with a 6-1-1 record, proudly their best ever in Chapel Hill and Durham. “Once you reach a certain age, and spend all day at a desk at work, you learn to play very smart lacrosse,” Bull half-jokes. AWLC is a group of women who are unquestionably dedicated to the game, and, one weekend a year, they have the chance to simply compete. Every year, they advance lacrosse in the Deep South beyond expectations, and, in their spare time, play the sport they love. |