Lacrosse is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins dating back to indigenous people as early as the 12th century.  By the 17th century, a version of the sport was well-established and documented in the territory of present-day Canada. In this version, each team consisted of 100-1,000 players, the field was several miles long, and games lasted 2-3 days. In 1860, William George Beers, a Canadian dentist, codified the game, shortening the length and reducing the number of players to 12 per team. The women’s game was introduced by Louisa Lumsden in Scotland in 1890, and the first women’s club in the US was started by Rosabelle Sinclair at Bryn Mawr School in 1926.

Nearly 100 years later, the Acalanes Girls Varsity Lacrosse team kicked off their 2024 season on the road against the Dougherty Valley Wildcats.  Coming off a successful 2023 campaign where the team posted a 13-6 record, this year’s team features a new head coach, Giles Imrie, and 12 new players, including 3 sophomores (vs. 1 last year) and 4 freshmen (vs. none last year). Despite all the changes and persistent rain, the team managed to secure a 16-10 victory.

The Dons started off slow, perhaps due to a bit of early season nerves. After falling behind 1-0, Sophomore Emily Roberts scored on a pass from Freshman Grace Colaco to tie the game 1-1. The game went back and forth to a 3-3 tie, and then the Dons took the lead that they would not relinquish on a goal from Senior Tea Smith with an assist from fellow Senior Ella Thomason.

For the game, the team converted 16 goals on 30 shots. Team Captains Grace Imrie and Tea Smith filled up the stat sheets. Grace had 3 goals on 6 shots along with 1 assist, 7 draw controls, and 2 loose balls controlled. Tea had 4 goals on 6 shots with 1 assist.  Junior Campbell Evans and Sophomore Emily Roberts chipped in two goals each. Ella Thomason and fellow Senior Jenna Steele, Sophomore Reese Imrie, Grace Colaco and fellow Freshman Catalina Liu scored the other goals.  Ella led the team with 3 assists.

The defense was anchored by Senior Goalie Addie Martin, who did a tremendous job blocking a number of shots, including a few off of penalties. She was helped on defense by a number of experienced seniors, including Team Captain Avery Ives, Elsa Braunstein, Jasmine Frost, Jacqueline Kuhner, and Kelly Todhunter. Junior Claire Zimmerman and Freshman Reese Tierney also pitched in to help keep the Wildcats offense in check.

This will be my 6th season writing Boosters articles. Fortunately for all of you, this will be the first time that other parent volunteers will write some of the articles, meaning that at least some of what you read this season will be well-written, fact-based journalism. My one ask is that if anyone has a nice camera, please come take as many individual and team pictures as you can. Even if you can only do one home game and one away game, this will give us enough to pretend that the pictures are from the specific game we are covering. If you don’t, we are just going to insert the pictures of the stat sheet. Go Dons!

Please come support the team for their first home game of the season on Friday, February 23rd against Cal High at 7pm