2009 Women's Lacrosse Awards & Honors

The 2009 Generals Lacrosse season brough many accolades to the team and individuals alike. One of the most meaningful and rewarding things that our team did this year was to get to know Maggie Reca and her family through the Friends of Jaclyn program. We all look forward to continuing to get to know the Magge and her family better throughout the many years to come!

All-ODAC Conference Honors:
1st Team: Kelsi Robinson '09; Britten Mathews '10; Emmy Mathews '11
2nd Team: Colleen Evans '09

Honorable Mention: Kate Flippen '09; Meredith Freeman '10

IWLCA Chesapeake Regional All-American Honors:
1st Team: Kelsi Robinson '09; Emmy Mathews '11

2nd Team: Colleen Evans '09; Britten Mathews '10

IWLCA All-American Honors:
3rd Team: Kelsi Robinson '09

IWLCA North-South Senior All-Star Game Selections:

Colleen Evans '09; Kelsi Robinson '09 (see photo below)

I would like to take this time to thank the 2009 class of Colleen Evans, Katie Flippen and Kelsi Robinson for a fantastic 4 years at W&L. Their hard work, determination and commitment resulted in many successes for the program, including a four year record of 61-16, 3 ODAC Championships and 3 NCAA berths. Each of you are incredible young women and I look forward to seeing where your talents and passions take you.

Finally, a big thank you to Rachel Barr and Wendy Orrison who have now completed their final seasons with W&L women's lacrosse. Rachel completed her 3rd year with the Generals this spring and has returned to New Hampshire to explore career options in nursing and graphic design. Rachel will be missed for her insight on and off the field, her guidance and leadership to student-athletes and, of course, her killer pool workouts and arts and crafts abilities! Over Wendy's eight years with the program she has been a voice of fun, passion and commitment and someone we all will miss at practice each and every day. THANK YOU!!

We are incredibly proud of this year's successes both on the field and in the classroom and are very excited for the 2010 season! See you all in the fall :-)

2005 Graduate Kristen Brown Shares Quotes from Members of her Lacrosse Team (Part 2)

Quotes from Players

I asked some of the players to answer three questions:
-What does lacrosse mean to you?
-What is your favorite memory?
-What does it feel like to be the first public high school team in the city of Philadelphia?
Their answers are listed below.
Naomi Suarez:
Lacrosse is my life and my everything
Favorite memory: Jade and Chanel falling!
I feel like a legend, and that we are making history here at Mastery Charter Shoemaker Campus.

Octavia (Tai) Bridgeford:
Lacrosse is like a family built off of hard work and diligence.
In Philadelphia, being the first public lacrosse team I feel excited and obligated to do 200% better.
Ti'erra Ferguson:
Lacrosse means commitment. It's like a simple word that means family.
Favorite memory: When Jade fell!

Patricia Helms:
To me lacrosse means dedication, hard work and memories for years to come.
Favorite memories: Our second game when even though we lost, we all was in a good mood and got down and dirty in the mud!
It feels good to be an outcast, but it's a lot of pressure starting something historical Jade Henderson:
Lacrosse is determination, teamwork and fun; play a sport that is hardly recognized in my neighborhood.
Favorite memory: The most memorable part of lacrosse is when our center checked the goalie and we scored at the end of the game!
Starting a team makes me feel like I'm starting something that will go & be bigger than I am; I feel like a leader because I took part in a historical team. I feel like Richard Allen because he started the first AME Church and it went on to be such a beautiful, successful church.

2005 Graduate Kristen Brown Coaches Lacrosse in Philadelphia (Part 1)

After not picking up a lacrosse stick for nearly four years, I had really begun to miss the sport. It probably comes as no surprise that my ears perked up when a friend mentioned that she was helping coach a local Philadelphia middle/high school team, and could potentially use help. Soon after, I found myself traveling out to West Philadelphia two to three times a week to serve as a volunteer assistant coach to the first girls team in the Philadelphia Public League. I joined two dedicated teachers, Debb Jetter and Megan Zor, who worked to establish the team at Mastery Charter Shoemaker Campus (MCSC)- a public charter school in Philadelphia (see picture below of coaching staff).
Being a part of something that is just getting off the ground has certainly had its challenges. While many elite public high school lacrosse programs exist just miles away in suburban Philadelphia, no such league exists within city limits. As a result, coaches Jetter and Zor had to to work hard to find private school opponents willing to compete against our brand new program. Since MCSC serves 7th through 10th graders, we often had to compete against opponents who were older, bigger and more experienced than us. Additionally, the team had to obtain equipment and facilities to play a sport that 10th grader Jade Henderson-Hayes explains "is hardly recognized in our neighborhood." Despite the obstacles and challenges, this experience has proved to be incredibly rewarding. I've watched as the girls worked hard to transition from novices to real lacrosse players. Girls who at the beginning of the season couldn't catch two balls in a row and would barely run faster than a jog, are now sprinting, catching, passing, anticipating and playing with their hearts. As the school requires that all team members meet strict academic requirements to remain eligible, it has become clear that the sport has instilled a sense of discipline in players and helped them continually focus on academic achievement. I've also seen several players step up to take on major leadership roles that they might not have otherwise had.
Even though we didn't have a winning record this year, I'm positive that this was a winning year for Mastery Charter Shoemaker Girls' Lacrosse.

Next week Kristen will share Quotes from the players!

Checking-in with 2008 Graduate Allison Gockley

While I really miss W&L and especially the lax team, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I have been very busy as usual in my first year “in the real world”. Besides the occasional trip to Lexington and visiting Kat in Aspen, one of the highlights of this year was my medical mission trip to Guatemala this spring. I traveled to several villages in Guatemala with 20 other people from my church setting up clinics to provide basic medical care to people most of who have never seen a doctor in their life. Guatemala is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, but most of the people live in complete poverty without running water or nutritious food, let alone medical care. While we saw a ton of patients with a wide variety of needs, the highlight for me was definitely doing cool procedures with the surgeon who came on the trip. I got to give injections and cut with a scalpel and all kinds of gross stuff (I spare you all the details)! We also had the opportunity to build a new home for a widow with six children. I was involved in digging the foundation and while I’m pretty sure I have never been as dusty as I was afterwards, everyone was impressed with my pickaxe skills, which I attributed to playing lax of course. I am excited to begin medical school at Penn State this fall and know that W&L has given me a great foundation for all that is to come. Glad to hear that the W&L lax team had another great year and as always…L4L!

Alumna Interview with 2007 Graduate Avery Lovejoy

After graduating Washington and Lee University I worked at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, England (80 miles West of London). Marlborough is a private boarding school for grades 8-12 with prestigious pupils (Sting's kids went there as well as Princess Eugenie, Fergies youngest daughter) I worked as the lacrosse coach as well as a teaching assistant in the English department. The lacrosse teams played against many other boarding schools across the country as well as in Wales. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to travel during breaks and visit other cities and countries: a few I visited were Dublin, Galway, Cork, and Waterford, Ireland; Madrid, Spaid; Paris, France; Stonehenge, Avon, London, Avebury, Salisbury, Swindon, and Bath, England. It was quite an experience! (Avery with fellow 2007 grads below)

After returning from England, I worked from the end of this past August until the end of December at Spaeth Design in New York city. Spaeth design is the company that does all the Christmas windows for Macys, Lord and Taylor, Saks, and we did Cartier this year as well. I was working on all those animated windows and was pretty much in charge of the "treats" window for Lord and Taylor (it had a big gingerbread house and revolving cake) I had to work on my pastry decorating skills and use pastry bags to decorate the large house and cake carousel as if they were actually made with icing! (I used caulk).

The weekend after Thanksgiving ('08) John Richard Garland Jr., an '07 W&L alum and former baseball/football player, proposed to me. We are getting married October 10, 2009 in Greenwich, Connecticut. I will then be moving down to Fort Worth, Texas where his job is at US Growth Funds (a private equity group). For now, I am working at E C Scott group a fragrance distribution company in Norwalk, Connecticut. I am in charge of their "operations", which basically means I am in charge of updating the new system of old and new merchandise, helping to create the website for the company and keeping it current, and doing credit checks on companies that want to use us as their distributors. I will be working at E C Scott while planning the wedding and finding a job in Texas!