For the record, the Owings Mills McDonogh (Md.) girls’ lacrosse team defeated Bradenton IMG Academy (Fla.) by a score of 11-7 yesterday in a neutral site game this morning in Charlottesville, Va.
The game featured the most dominant girls’ lacrosse program in the country the last decade and a half, pitted against a “superprep” team which is aspiring towards a similar dominance nationwide.
For those of you wondering why we term IMG Academy a “superprep” team, let’s refer to our definition:
superprep: 1. A scholastic team playing at the edge, or outside of, recognized scholastic competition. 2. A team that sometimes plays by different rules from their peers (international or collegiate rules).
The IMG girls’ lacrosse program started in 2018, playing a diverse schedule including teams from a number of states. The second year of their existence, the Ascenders played McDonogh, losing 17-5. Which makes today’s final score worth noting; it is a tremendous improvement, showing that the program’s early big wins over Orlando Lake Highland Prep (Fla.) and Charlottesville St. Anne’s-Belfield (Va.) were very notable.
Why? When you are a sports academy with a lot of experience training professional and Olympic athletes in sports from tennis and golf to soccer and football, there are likely to be outsized expectations of how good a girls’ lacrosse team can be put together from a national footprint.
I’ll be interested to see the next iteration of IMG Academy’s success.