As they start the new season there are some seniors who are in their last year of playing for Warren Central girls lacrosse. Dream Hood is one of those seniors.
She has been playing for four years now. She first joined lacrosse because her friend was doing it, and she knew head coach Gary Roberts as her teacher and a former soccer coach for little kids. Her favorite part about the sport is her teammates and coaches.
“I just feel like it’s a very good community,” she said. “We all get along really well.”
Hood said she feels that working on left and right hand movements is what the team needs to work on more.
“We are definitely working on our left arms like just switching from left to right hand and more ground pose,” she said.
Senior Terajana Chiles, a third-year returning lacrosse athlete, is feeling good about the upcoming season. Chiles chose lacrosse due to not making it in basketball. Even though she didn’t succeed with one sport she tried a new thing and is still giving it her all in lacrosse.
She felt the best after beating Roncalli High School’s seniors in a 7-4 game, when it was Roncalli’s senior night on Roncalli’s home turf.
“They thought we were a weak enough team to beat, to make them feel good about themselves,” she said.
Senior Hannah Nicholas says that her father David Nicholas, one of the coaches, has inspired her to do better and accomplish her goal when it comes to lacrosse. As she makes mistakes he is always there to correct her.
“I joined because my dad was a goalie coach so I was like why not,” she said. “My dad definitely inspires me. He’s always getting on me if I make a mistake, or what I could do better on.”
Junior Camila Martinez is just now joining the experience in lacrosse. She said the group is working a lot on teamwork and defensive moves.
“My favorite part about lacrosse is the girls because everyone there is so helpful and it’s a really positive environment,” she said. ”They are really helpful when you need help, like if you mess up and they are there to help when you need it.”
Math teacher Gary Roberts has now been coaching lacrosse for ten years. He coached soccer for 30 years before that.
“The head athletic director thought he had someone to coach lacrosse but he didn’t, so he asked me to do it,” Roberts said.
After coaching both sports for a bit, Roberts decided to focus solely on lacrosse.
”We’ve reached a point where our players have reached better skills, so I think we could work more on offense and instead go for the goal,” he said.
Roberts started coaching lacrosse not knowing what it was about, but he likes it because “it’s a new sport and a lot of kids here at Warren haven’t played.” Now, he has inspired David Nicholas, the other coach for the team. Nicholas has also been coaching lacrosse for three years now.
“Coach Roberts was my soccer coach when I was little, so I look up to him,” Nicholas said.
While the coaches have been doing this for a while. The coaches say that they need to work on a lot for this season's games to build strong players.
“We’ve been focusing a lot on our defense, making sure we are staying in positions and focusing on our passing and catching this year,” he said.
Both Roberts and Nicholas say female students at Warren Central should come try out for the team even if they don’t have experience in lacrosse.
“It’s a fun sport that a lot of people don’t know a lot about,” Nicholas said.