Season Outlook
There is a new level of optimism and excitement with the Haverford College women’s lacrosse program this season. A fresh face has stepped in to continue the development and progress of the program as first year head coach Julie Young takes the reins for the 2009 campaign.
Young inherits a squad that returns its top four goal scorers in seniors Lauren Finkel, Liz Koelmel, and Casey Sanborn along with sophomore Kayleigh Herrick-Reynolds. That quartet should blend well with the new freshmen talent on the turf to provide more firepower in the offensive end for the Fords.
In the defensive end, returner Kristin Sockett will anchor the “D” and provide a much needed voice to a unit that will be filled out with newcomers in front of junior returning goalkeeper Siobhan Neitzel.
Young’s end goal for the season is to finish above the .500 mark overall and to qualify for one of the five Centennial Conference playoff spots at the end of the regular season. She preaches a ‘steps to the end’ process rather than simply a season-end result view, though, and that is where she is already making her mark on the program.
Controlling the game by its particular facets — possession, draw controls, 50/50 balls, turnovers — are the means to the end for Young’s squad. The process to gain that control will start with requiring game-like intensity in practice.
Through that type of cultural shift in practice, Young is ultimately looking for her team to minimize mistakes. She’s not against taking risks; in fact Young recognized the rewards that come with risk taking. What she expects from her Haverford players in 2009 is to learn to recognize when to take those risks and to not repeat mistakes.
It will all start, therefore, in ‘winning’ at practice.
“I want our team to feel confident when they step onto the game turf,” explained Young. “They’ll breed that confidence through their individual accountability for improvement, fitness, and intensity at practice.”
Young sites the ease in transition with her new team and its raised expectations to her trio of senior captains.
“Liz (Koelmel), Casey (Sanborn), and Lauren (Finkel) have done a tremendous job so far this season,” confided the coach. “They’ve begun to take ownership of the transition and what we’re trying to teach, and have been pretty diligent about holding our players to be accountable at practice as well as away from the turf,” the first-time head coach added.
Young sees some of the challenges she will face in her first season at Haverford as the same ones that made the job attractive in the first place.
“The (Centennial) Conference regularly offers national-caliber competition and this year appears to be no different with a number of league teams ranked in the preseason top-20,” stated Young. As for the challenges across the entirety of the season Young adds, “We are a program on the rise so we have to gain confidence through our opening non-conference slate to prepare ourselves for the rigors of the Centennial season.”