Girls Lacrosse Season is soon Underway

By Abigail Adkins, Reporter      Published January 28, 2020

For Lily Yanagihara, a freshman at Northwest Career and Technical Academy, and others on the Centennial High School girls lacrosse team, their weeks in January and February have been filled up with practices in preparation for the upcoming season. Practices officially began in early January four days a week, Monday through Thursday, with each being two hours long.  

Yanagihara first started playing lacrosse in sixth grade, continuing throughout the rest of middle school. Her position had varied, since she played both attack and defense, depending on where she was needed. As she entered high school, she will now be playing her first season as a Lady Bulldog.  

Throughout practices, her team has been working on drills to master their stick skills, especially involving their left hand, and their ability to communicate. Yanagihara stated, “Communication plays a major role in lacrosse and is necessary for the defense and attack to have a successful game.”

Along with those skills, another priority for them during practices is conditioning. They do mainly cardio activities such as sprints, suicide runs, and crossfit type workouts to prepare their bodies physically for games. Leading up to their first game, which is near the end of February, many small scrimmages between the team members take place to get more experience. 

Outside of practices, the coaches would like for them to always keep practicing basic stick skills, and to go running in order to maintain at least an eight-minute mile. Yanagihara stated, “It can be quite tiring to balance the long day of school, and then having to put my all into practice.”  Their coaches want their players to always put 100 percent effort into practices and games.

 In the end, Yanagihara loves sports and the excitement of playing, but she stated, “It just takes a lot of time, commitment, and effort.”