Losing in the final four of States, two years in a row has only made the girls’ lacrosse team more ready for the upcoming season.

Finals taught the players and the coaches that you need to keep your head in the game no matter what is happening.  A delay in the middle of their June 7th final game threw the coaches and the players off, according to head coach Lauren Thraves.

        From last year, the team is taking everything into consideration. “I think we mentally took ourselves out of big games. We are more confident, more experienced, and definitely more focused,” Thraves said.

This year the team is taking on a completely new mindset to break the streak of losing in the finals. “We [have] come out with a lot more intention this year,” senior attack Cam Edson said.

They are ready to see just how far they can push themselves in the upcoming season. “We’re definitely hungry and we want to win States this year, so that’s really motivating us,” junior midfield Jen Wendelken said.

        The team is hopeful that they will be able to make changes this year.. “We’re keeping practice a lot more intense and more disciplined,” Edson said, “We’ve changed our warm-up and stretching routine. It’s all very synchronized, so it requires less talking and more focus.”

        With their increasing discipline and difficulty in workouts the team endured an intense week during tryouts. “Tryouts were really hard. For the first three days it’s not really lacrosse tryouts, its track tryouts. They were competitive, we had a lot of eighth graders come out, and I think they really pushed us to show what we’re made of,” Edson said.

        The team is changing more than just their workout plans. “Everyone is a lot closer this year,” Edson said, “I think we’re closer because, as a team, we all came into the season with a goal.”

        The team will need to keep that closeness throughout the season due to their loss of seven seniors from previous years. “We definitely feel their presence not being there,” Wendelken said, “Even without them, we have a strong team, so we’ll come back.”

        Though the team has lost their last two seasons in the final four, they are not going to let that get in the way of their excitement for the upcoming season. “We are excited [for the season], we’ve had three scrimmages and each time we got better and better,” Edson said.