This story initially appeared on Behind the Whistle, the official blog of the IWLCA, and is being republished with permission from the organization. Meghan McDonogh is the head coach at the Catholic University of America.
Last week was spring break for many of our college lacrosse teams here in the District of Columbia, and as my fellow coaches know, that is a week fraught with, “How do I feed my team every day?” and, “What do I do with them?” so we don’t all kill each other! Thankfully, I have done this before, and we have some wonderful parents and Father Beal, who took care of a few meals, and I also have some great assistants that are happy to get free meals, too, so that part was done.
After figuring out how to feed 36 young women, now we focused on what to do with them … we obviously had games and practice, as well as a men’s game to attend one day. We also partnered with our men’s team to participate in the One Love Escalation Workshop (which our team also highly recommends), but we still needed a way to make sure we took advantage of the time we had with fewer distractions to explore our AWESOME city that we usually take for granted. We had hosted American University and Howard University for a play day in the fall, gone to cheer them on in February and remembered the University of the District of Columbia Firebirds were in town, too, so obviously it made sense to try to bring all our teams together, right?
Well, the other coaches agreed, so a text and email chain began between Karen Healy Silcott, Lindsay Teeters, Zhane Ruffin and me to figure out what this would be. We went into full camp counselor mode — it took off and we opted for a low-key scavenger hunt in the Smithsonian Museum of American History (the only one open that day) and throughout the Mall of America. We distributed a list of questions to our players to get them talking (and realize they are more similar than different) and Dum-Dums lollipops so that they wouldn’t be super awkward as we mixed our teams together.
While, as coaches, we already knew how special the lacrosse community can be, the opportunity to come together helped us each reiterate that to our team members. One of the top takeaways that everyone shared was that D.C. is a great city and was a one of the main reasons each person chose their respective program. So, not only is D.C. an awesome city, which we all can’t recommend enough, but we also wanted to share the TOP FIVE reasons D.C. women’s lacrosse is awesome:
1. Honestly, how many teams would tolerate coaches who think it is a great idea to go hang out with other teams? Not only did our players tolerate the event, but they thought it was pretty cool, both during and after the fact. Many a social media friendship was ignited, and the goal is that this will become an annual event! Hopefully next year we can add a service component, too.
2. While Catholic was the only team that took the metro to the Mall, all of our campuses are accessible through public transportation! American, Catholic and UDC are all on the same Red Line, and Howard is just down the street from us and on the Green Line (a super easy transfer). Besides occasional (frequent?) scheduling snafus, the D.C. Metro is a pretty easy and affordable way to get around the city.
3. How cool is it that our four teams are so varied and different, yet all play lacrosse? We have American, a private Division I school in the Patriot League; Catholic, a smaller faith-based Division III school; Howard, a private Division I HBCU; and UDC, a public, Division II HBCU; yet we could all come together and have fun!
4. The head coaches all have really cool dogs … and while we didn’t get to meet Noodle the Doodle (Lindsay’s dog), Caesar (@caesar_thebabybully) and Bailey Belle (@BaileyBelleDoodleDog) had fun with all of the teams, too!
5. We all love ice cream!