Stasya Hopp | Reporter

They were told it would be the hardest practice of their lives. For a week, veteran players told the new freshman to hydrate, rest, eat well, and mentally prepare themselves for a practice that would show the team what they were made of. After their warm up lap, the conditioning would start with a 2 ½ mile run.

Chattanooga, Tenn., junior Practice Coordinator Lucy Newbold said as a freshman, she was scared to death. This practice was her nightmare. She said she told herself that she was a member of this team and because she cared she resolved herself to come ready to run. She wore her lacrosse “pinnie” to class and drove to the fields immediately afterwards. After their warm up, the new players were shocked to be told they would not be spending their practice running, but that they were going to Shorty’s to eat pizza.

This surprise ‘Shorty’s practice,’ as the players call it, highlights the tight knit relationship of the Baylor Women’s Lacrosse Team. This is the kind of bonding that makes the team who they are. Their dynamic has been shaped by the fact that the women coach themselves.

“Division one teams are governed by a hierarchy of coaches and staff, but we’re governed by each other,” Newbold said. “One of the hardest but most incredible things about this team is that our success is determined exclusively by us, and because of that, when we succeed, there’s so much to be proud of.

Baylor Women’s Lacrosse typically has 20 to 25 players on the team. Aspen, Colo., senior women’s lacrosse President Kelsey Fitzgerald said 90 to 95 percent of players come from out of state. The team has flourished despite not having a coach, and perhaps, in part, because of it. They are instead led by a board made up of players who hold the positions of president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, and practice coordinator.

Unlike football, which is a Division I Baylor sports team, lacrosse is a club team. Barrington, Ill., sophomore Treasurer Lilly Robbins said the family bonds between the players have been cultivated by their team dynamic as a club sport.

Fitzgerald said because lacrosse is a club sport, and there is no coach to act as the authority figure, players have to choose to be there every day out of a genuine love for lacrosse.

“Everyone really wants to be there and wants to work for it every day,” Robbins said. “Being on the team is a privilege. It’s been stressed to me from the beginning that this team is a family.”

San Diego, Calif., senior women's lacrosse former President Kayla Weisenberger said the team’s greatest strength is their unity.

“We’re one,” Weisenberger said.

Robbins said women’s lacrosse is an obscure sport. It is unlike any other athletic organization at Baylor and it is even vastly different from its counterpart – men’s lacrosse.

Fitzgerald said men’s lacrosse is more physical, whereas women's lacrosse has a bigger emphasis on technical skills. Men’s and women’s lacrosse are almost not even the same sport, Fitzgerald said. Women’s lacrosse requires more skill to make up for the rules that restrict their ability to play as aggressively as men.

Durango, Colo., Baylor graduate student Alyssa Swan said while women’s lacrosse is “low contact, it’s very fast paced.” There’s a combination of “power and finesse” required, and you need to have “very acute focus and precision,” Swan said.

Women’s lacrosse “demands excellence in so many small ways,” Newbold said. “Games are won and lost in small moments.”

Baylor Women’s Lacrosse is part of the Texas Women’s Lacrosse League, or TWLL, at a Division I club level. Swan said Baylor plays schools like the University of Texas, Texas A&M, Southern Methodist University, and Texas Christian University, who they are evenly matched with and provide good competition. Swan said Baylor also plays Division II schools that have brand new lacrosse programs with players who often have not played lacrosse before college. Newbold said the Baylor team embraces new programs, and frequently reaches out to offer help in their growth.

However, Swan said the game record doesn’t always reflect their talent accurately. Newer programs often forfeit because they “didn’t want to get creamed” by a school with more experience, so the Baylor club team ends up only playing schools like the University of Texas, which have multiple coaches and recruited athletes, Swan said. The record is skewed because schools Baylor would likely beat are forfeiting, so many times the recorded games are against teams slightly better than and teams evenly matched against Baylor.

Losing to teams like the University of Texas boils down to the coaching aspect, Fitzgerald said. The board members who lead Baylor Women’s Lacrosse are players on the field, and Fitzgerald said it’s difficult to coach while also playing. Teams that have coaches are provided with more structure, which Fitzgerald said is what Baylor needs to take it to the next level.

That is not to say Baylor Women’s Lacrosse cannot succeed without a coach. Newbold said the team is still in the beginning phases of its transition into peer leadership, and the board is learning everyday what that leadership looks like. She said she thinks there’s value to having a coach, but that the women are happy with how they are being led at this point and time.

The best way to grow is adjusting to the current system. “We understand the complexities that come with peer leadership, but we also understand the benefits of the system we’re running,” Newbold said.

When Swan was a junior undergraduate at Baylor, she approached the board and said she thought there should be another position to help with coaching in a more official way, and thus the position of practice coordinator was created. Swan, now in her first year of graduate school, was the first to hold that position. Three years ago, in the same year the practice coordinator position was implemented, the team released their coach and became wholly independent, controlled internally by their board.

Newbold said their former coach was ultimately unhappy with her role within the team as well as her pay, and Weisenberger said some “views didn’t align.” Swan said there was not a lot of structure to their practices, and attendance went down because of the way practices were run. Sometimes practices would end 45 minutes to an hour early, and when girls are busy with school and social activities, “coming to an inefficient practice is not attractive,” Swan said.

The team had the qualities required to “succeed with or without a coach,” and the coach decided to leave her position, Newbold said.

Despite the struggles that come with being self-coached, the familial bond they have “forms a camaraderie where we’re inclined to be the best that we can be for one another,” Newbold said.

Weisenberger said she was in awe of the teamwork and competitiveness Baylor Women’s Lacrosse displays in moments akin to when they tied Texas A&M during the 2018 season. She said little moments like that are why she plays lacrosse.

To the Baylor Women’s Lacrosse Team, lacrosse is more than just a sport. Robbins said playing means “working towards a bigger purpose,” and is “being a part of something that bigger than yourself.”

“Everyone is willing to do anything for anyone, whether that be inside lacrosse or outside lacrosse,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re all there for each other all the time.”

Ultimately, lacrosse is just a part of the Baylor experience. “I love playing and I love competing but what I’ve seen is a big part of the team is making girls feel welcome,” Robbins said. “I think loving and accepting the new girls wherever they come from, meeting them where they’re at, and helping them get adjusted to Baylor through the lacrosse team will be really important to me.”

The women of Baylor Lacrosse not only develop character on the field, but off it as well. Newbold said she values being a good friend and teammate over her team’s record.

“I doubt this experience will be measured by wins and losses, but it will be measured by the people I got to know,” Newbold said. Swan said she doesn’t remember the scores of her favorite games, but she does know that she has friends on the team who will be in her life forever.

Growth in the face of adversity is something that has made this team special and different. They have blossomed as a self-coached group and said they have become a family. Lacrosse may be just a small part of Baylor, but it has made an impact on the players that is likely to last a lifetime.

“Joining this team has probably been one of the most, if not the most important thing I’ve done at Baylor,” Robbins said.