Women's club sport resurrected
Lacrosse finds growing interest
By Kelly Slaughter Special to the Kansan
The Kansas Women's Lacrosse Team started up in February after taking a three-year break.
This year's women's club team is fairly inexperienced. Half of the 19-member team had never played before. In fact, many had never seen a game played. Alexis McKinley, Olathe sophomore, had only heard of lacrosse shortly before she joined the team.
"It's different than anything I've ever played, it's so aggressive," McKinley said. But she said she wasn't afraid to play in her first lacrosse game.
One of the team's more experienced players, Pat Coate, played varsity lacrosse for Loyola University in Maryland. She was also a seven-year member of the United States Women's Lacrosse Team. Coate said that playing with the inexperienced members was fun and not at all frustrating.
"What is frustrating is that scrimmaging is difficult because there are so few girls on the team," Coate said.
The Kansas Women's Lacrosse Club was started this year by Lara Ratican, a sophomore and now president of the club.
"I started playing lacrosse my junior year at Kirkwood High School in St. Louis," Ratican said. "When I came to KU my freshman year, there wasn't a lacrosse club for women. I really missed playing, and I figured on a campus of almost 30,000 students there would be others out there who wanted to play."
Ratican called Recreation Services and got information on how to start a club. After she got the University's approval, the club started practicing in February.
Ratican, who plays the position of center, said she thought that the biggest problem facing this year's team was the lack of awareness.
"People just don't know the club exists," Ratican said. She added that another problem is that the club began after the spring semester enrollment.
"It's very hard to design a practice schedule that fits every team member's class schedule. Hopefully next year people will be able to plan their schedules around practice, which is usually in the afternoon," Ratican said.
Ratican said that the team was still searching for an adviser, which is required for all KU club sports teams. This person must be a full-time faculty member who works on campus.
"We also need to find a referee from out of state because there aren't any referees in Kansas for Women's lacrosse," Ratican said.
In spite of all of the first-year hurdles, Ratican said that the team was committed and excited to be playing.
Larissa Herspring, Manhattan first-year law student, is the coach of this year's team. Herspring started her lacrosse career at the age of 14 in northern Virginia. She continued playing through college at
the varsity level at the University of Virginia.
"I played center, attack wing and third home, basically wherever they needed someone tall." Herspring said. "The hardest part of coaching is not having mandatory practices. "It is also a big adjustment between playing and coaching at a varsity level and a club level. At a varsity level there is no teaching involved, everyone knows how to play. But at the club level, some of the players have never played before."
She said another difficulty was that lacrosse is not as popular in the Midwest as it is on the East Coast.
"When you drive around on the East Coast in the spring, little kids younger than eight-years-old are running around with lacrosse sticks. And almost every high school offers it as sport. Here, people say to me, 'You play la-what?' Herspring said.
"The reason the original women's club lacrosse team didn't last at KU was because they didn't have many teams to play. I think that may have changed these past three years," Ratican said.
Lacrosse, however, is beginning to gain interest in the Midwest. The University of Colorado's Women's Club Lacrosse team has a great number of members and it may become a varsity sport.
At least eight Universities in the Midwest have women's lacrosse teams, including: Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska, Texas A&M, Baylor University, the University of Texas, the University of Oklahoma and Colorado.
The way the game is played
Lacrosse, which is also known as "the fastest game on two feet," was invented by Native Americans. The original version was played with spiked wooden sticks and was one of the major forms of warfare among some tribes.
It was played without contact, as it still is, except when shooting at the goal. Teams ranges in number from ten to several hundred players and playing fields ranged in size from two hundred yards to more than a mile in length.
Lacrosse has come a long way since it was first played two centuries ago. The sticks have changed; spikes are no longer allowed. And because it is no longer a form of war, it is more like ice hockey, but instead of passing a puck on the ice, lacrosse players pass a rubber ball through the air.
For a women's game, 12 women from each team take the field. Each has five players on offense, five on defense, a center and a goalie.
The object is to score as many times as possible wighing two twenty-five minute halves by shooting a hard rubber ball into the goal. The goal is a bit larger than an ice-hockey goal, and is guarded by a goalie. In women's lacrosse, unlike men's, there are no boundaries, no offside and absolutely no body checking. It requires skill, finesse and speed.
Sophie Nassif, Sioux Falls, S.D., sophomore, uses a lacrosse stick to scoop the ball into the net. Women's lacrosse was revived as a club sport at the University in February.
Tyler Wirken / KANSAN
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April, 1996 The Hill
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