March 11th, 2024, was the start of the first-ever WIAA lacrosse season. The first-ever WIAA girls and boys state lacrosse tournaments will be held June 8th, 2024 in Sun Prairie.
“It’s always exciting to come into a new season and coming off a state championship win; we are hopeful to make another run at the state title. So it’s exciting to bring new faces to the team,” says Sara Tuescher, head coach of the girls lacrosse program.
Prior to this season, the sport was run under the Wisconsin Lacrosse Federation (WLF) for bother girls and boys lacrosse.
Lacrosse is a contact team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It consists of seven players on the field with a goalie in goal. It is one of the oldest organized sports in North America, with its origins in the indigenous people of the 12th century.
The WIAA has shared a lacrosse rule book, with terms and procedures including limitation of player and coach contact prior to the season. Each team is allowed one scrimmage during the season and games could start as early as March 19th.
“I’m most excited about meeting new people on the team and building new relationships and hopefully making it back to state and winning again,” says senior Katie Curry.
Due to the limited number of girls registered for the season, the Arrowhead Girls lacrosse program is condensing players to two teams instead of three like the previous few years. Before the pandemic, the program ran four teams, with two varsity teams and two JV teams. From 2021-2023 the program ran two varsity teams and one JV team.
“It’s a little alarming, but I feel like it will bring us closer together rather than putting us into three teams and having to figure out a new schedule for a third team. Two teams might be easier for coaches to figure out schedules,” says senior Jessie Lufter.
Another factor in the decision to condense the teams is that now the sport is WIAA, the third team that would have been varsity white would become a varsity reserve team and would only be able to play other varsity reserve teams from other schools.
Due to the lack of varsity reserve teams for other schools, Arrowhead’s team would have very limited teams to verse in its schedule.
“It will be hard to get used to in the beginning but it will benefit us as a whole,” says Senior Sara Pfeiffer.
A new change this year as a WIAA rule is games are now split up into quarters instead of halves. At each quarter, goalies will switch sides.
“I believe the overall structure of how we coach and our coaching philosophy will not change but the structure of the sport will change with different game structures but our coach mentality won’t change,” says Jill Goldammer a Varsity Coach.
The WIAA schedule this year has now scheduled lacrosse teams to play every team in their conference twice: once hosting a game and once traveling to the other team’s school for the game.
“Every opponent in every game we treat as its challenges and ways we can challenge ourselves and I think USM will be a big game since we will rematch from state and Hudson since we beat them in overtime last year which took us to state. Our Illinois teams will have less pressure but better competition than what we will see throughout the season,” says Tuescher.
