Early Sunday morning on May 9, the Coppell girl’s lacrosse team geared up and prepared itself for the day that would go down in Coppell history. Along with the boys’ lacrosse team, the Coppell girl’s lacrosse team won the Division II State Championship for the first time ever.
The girls arrived at the Episcopal School of Dallas Sunday morning and warmed up the same as they always do with a few laps around the field, stretching and line drills. The ball dropped at 9:30 a.m. and the game began.
“Playing in the morning was really difficult,” sophomore and center a-wing Ina Prevalsky said. “We had tried so hard and gotten so far, we had to win, and we had to win for Sarah.”
The girls managed to stay up in the first half of the game with a 6-2 lead, but knew that they could not let their lead influence their playing.
“We stayed up the whole game, but [St. Agnus] really wanted it,” senior captain Sarah Ditto said. “We have the stick skills to win against any team, we just had to keep our morale up and stay focused. We couldn’t get too relaxed about being ahead.”
That day, the girls’ defensive players, midfielders and offensive players all came together and went full throttle against St. Agnus. Not to mention, sophomore center Lexus DeLoach was on top of her game and scored seven goals.
“I’m a top scorer and I go into every game with the goal of scoring as much as I can,” DeLoach said. “They were triple teaming me a lot so it was hard to get the ball and then get it down the field.”
Sophomore Erin O’Brien scored three goals and had two assists during the game. Along with DeLoach and O’Brien, sophomores Brooke Bolling and Chelsea Beaulne both scored a goal, making the final score 12-7.
The girls team plays in the North Texas High school League and finished its district season off with a 6-6 record. The team plays teams all over the Metroplex, including Hockaday, McKinney, Ursuline, Highland Park, Plano and Allen, as well as teams from the Houston area.
“We practiced three times a week, our captains really made us focus during practices and our coaches made us do a lot of fitness and conditioning,” DeLoach said. “We all had the same goal and that was to win state.”
They are coached by Jennifer Turner, who played lacrosse at Texas A&M University, and Brooke Robinson, who played for Coppell as well as Texas Tech.
The girls started out their weekend with a tough game against Lamar at ESD. The girls were down by six points at half time, but came back in the second half and scored 13 goals for an 18-15 win.
“We really needed to step it up because we were lacking in communication,” Ditto said. “We had to make something happen. We all pushed ourselves to do what we had to do to get to that last game.”
After such a close game, the girls were determined to make their last game one for the books, and sure enough, they did.
With all the hype surrounding the boy’s lacrosse team and its repeat state win, the girls felt the pressure this year to bring home a trophy. Luckily, they were able to do just that.
“It’s my senior year and I figured [winning] would be the best way to go,” Ditto said. “I wanted it to be the best game we could have possibly played and it was.”
