Girls of all ages attending Montrose High School kick off their spring, with the ever-growing sport, lacrosse. 

The first practice was held in the AUX Gym as a result of Colorado’s bad spring weather. The team is excited to get out on a field for future practices after the weather calms down. In the meantime, the girls gathered together in partners and lined up on opposite ends of the gym, and worked on their throwing and catching skills.

“I had them adapt to the situation (for the first practice) because we were in a gym and not on a field which meant a lot of creative drills and races,” Allison said. 

For the girls who weren’t as experienced as the others, they spent their practice time doing wallball. 

“Wallball is a self-paced game you can play by yourself by throwing the ball against the wall and catching it,” Allison says. “You can be creative with it, but the best part about it is there’s a lot of repetition and you can get a lot of touches on the ball while you’re learning to catch and throw,” 

Currently, the team does not have a backup goalie. Senior, Tessa Bailey is returning to the team and is hoping to mentor younger player sophomore Autumn Huchel for this position. They have been practicing together on the sidelines, with Bailey, training Huchel how to transition from midfield to goalkeeper, helping her execute skills that can be useful with that position. 

“I’d like to be goalie since there’s no one else (currently claiming the position) and I think I can, not go on par with Tessa, but I think I can try to be as good,” Huchel said.

“I was showing Autumn how to juggle because it works with hand-eye coordination and I learned that at one of my goalie schools,” Bailey said. 

Bailey went on to talk about her hopefulness for the newer players, as she has played lacrosse for eight years, and high school lacrosse for all four years, besides her sophomore year, which is the year COVID canceled spring sports. 

“I’m excited to just get people out here, get people doing the sport, I really want to leave this school knowing that we will still have a lacrosse team and still have a good chance (at maturing as a team and working together),” 

“As long as everyone gets to practice, and everyone wants to get better, then I think it’ll be really good,” Huchel said.

To MHS, girls’ lacrosse is a pretty new sport, only being introduced to the school five years ago. With COVID’s introduction to the school in the spring of 2020, all spring sports were canceled. COVID continued to carry out hardships for school sports by the time the next school year started.

As of 2019, MHS has introduced a new coach, Chris Allison, who has played lacrosse for 45 out of the 54 years of his life. 

“I started out in college playing long-stick midfielder and then halfway through I switched to a short-stick midfielder starting at the face-off and playing both sides,” Allison said.

This isn’t Allison’s first time coaching teenagers, either. He spent 10 years before becoming a high school coach at the rec-center coaching rec-lacrosse with plenty of high schoolers, both girls and boys. 

“I think this season will work its way no matter what, and I think we’re going to have a fun time playing, I think we’re going to have some success and definitely more success than hardship,” Allison said.