The last year in the world of girls’ and women’s lacrosse has been one which the game is straddling two different realities: one of equality, and one of uniformity.
In the last couple of years, the sports has been demanding equality. Superstar players such as Charlotte North, Izzy Scane, and Shea Dolce have been propelling the sport to marketable heights. ESPN has opened its broadcast schedule to give the NCAA Tournament’s four quarterfinal games their own dedicated broadcast windows, just like the men’s tourney. In addition, the tournament finals are now scheduled next year for Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. — the exact same site and weekend the men will be playing.
There is likely to be a lot of talk in the lacrosse community about any disparity between the crowds attending the men’s and the women’s finals, since the comparisons will be front and center when the games take place. The question begs itself: does the Division I women’s championship final need to be held in the exact same park as the men’s?
That, friends, is uniformity. In this case, forcing comparisons between men’s and women’s lacrosse when it comes to fan engagement and whether the game can draw an equivalent number of paying customers.
There was a different kind of uniformity on display in the last year. This was in Next Collegiate Lacrosse, the modified Lacrosse Sixes league featuring historically black colleges and universities. NCL started its third season on the men’s side this spring, but it also introduced a women’s league for the first time.
But what the women in NCL played was a different game from what most women have played. This was a game played under men’s rules. Full contact was allowed. Helmets and pads were worn. The stick was twice as deep as what you would find in the women’s game.
The physical demands were not lost on the teams in the league. Bowie State finished its first day of play having to play a woman short because of numerous injuries. The Bulldogs, however, recovered from that opening weekend and finished a strong third in the league table.
The final weekend of NCL saw Morgan State taking on Hampton University in the championship. In a thrilling encounter, the Six Bears of Morgan managed an overtime win thanks to a clever attacking play in extra time.
At the NCAA Division I level, it seemed as though nobody wanted to be seen as the best team in all the land. Even though most pundits had Northwestern winning the national title, there were plenty of other contenders. One, Notre Dame, beat Northwestern in mid-February to move upwards in the Top 10. However, the Irish would lose to Syracuse only eight days later. The following week, the Orangewomen lost in overtime to Stony Brook.
The fortunes of the elite teams waxed and waned throughout the season. But if there was one team that seemed to be frustrated by its expectations, it was North Carolina. Major injuries hampered the Heels even before the season began, and the team finished out its season with seven defeats, the last one against Florida in the NCAA Tournament.
Florida would go on to upset the University of Maryland in the national quarterfinal round. Maryland had its own struggles throughout the season. In an odd statistic, the Terps were unbeaten on the road, and lost six matches at the Lacrosse and Field Hockey Complex (yep, we’re calling it that) after losing only five games at home during head coach Cathy Reese’s previous 16 seasons at the helm.
The national championship featured a rematch between Boston College and Northwestern. Northwestern had hammered the Eagles in 2023, but Kayla Martello would not let the 2024 national title escape her. She had an absolute game for the ages, pulling BC back from a 6-0 deficit with four second-quarter goals, which helped propel the Bostonians to a 14-13 thriller.
Elsewhere in the colleges, Tampa won the Division II title, Middlebury won the Division III championship, Onondaga Community College won in the NJCAA, Reinhardt University won the NAIA title, Vermont won the WCLA Division II championship, and, in what could be a harbinger of things to come, the WCLA Division I title was won by UCLA.
UCLA is one of a number of schools which will be joining the Big Ten Conference in 2024, which fattens up the women’s lacrosse league. Current women’s lacrosse programs Oregon and USC will be joining the Penn States, Marylands, and Michigans of the lacrosse world starting with fall ball. This could make the Big Ten one of the best lacrosse conferences we’ve seen since the heyday of the ACC around the turn of the 2010s.
Not to be outdone, however, the ACC is accepting Stanford and Cal-Berkeley as members for the upcoming year, joining an already loaded conference alongside Notre Dame, Syracuse, Virginia, and UNC.
The landscape of women’s lacrosse is further changing with the formation of a Big 12 conference including Cincinnati, Arizona State, Colorado, Florida, Cal-Davis, and San Diego State. Also, Charlotte and South Florida are joining the American Athletic Conference.
As confusing as this road map of women’s lacrosse is, the road to success in women’s lacrosse runs from Fairfield County in Connecticut to Baltimore County in Maryland. However, there were two teams upsetting the apple cart. One was South Huntington St. Anthony (N.Y.), a team which sought out the best competition and beat them all on the way to an undefeated record. One major highlight for the season was a triple-overtime win over Darien (Conn.), which ended in an absolute genius finish from Brooke Long.
Now, the other team looking to upset the order was Olney Good Counsel (Md.). The Falcons have been in the headwaters of national prominence for years, and were able to gain attention not only because of the quality of competition for the 2024 season, but by the ease by which they were able to win some of these non-conference games.
One major win was an 18-6 win over Charlottesville St. Anne’s-Belfield (Va.) at the annual Spring Fling. On the way to a WCAC championship, Good Counsel scored 388 goals, an average of 18 1/2 per contest. And without a possession clock.
Speaking of the possession clock, there has been movement in New York to impose the possession clock on a section-by-section basis starting in 2025. Too, there is now a plan on the table to add the possession clock to international play by the start of 2026 for championship events.