'If They Fight, They Win': How Florida State's Club Program Pushed for Varsity Team

Tuesday’s big news that Florida State would be adding an NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse team was driven by Title IX and members of the school’s women’s club team. 

Florida State, one of the largest and most well-known athletic departments in the country, will launch its varsity women’s lacrosse program for the 2025-26 academic year. Tuesday’s release celebrated the “fastest-growing college sport” and how it will impact the department and referenced gender equity and Title IX compliance. 

A May 2022 investigative report by USA Today shined a light on discrepancies in Title IX reporting processes in universities across the country. Florida State was one such school, as USA Today’s team of reporters uncovered that “more than half of the 66 women on its indoor track and field team never competed indoors. The school simply counted all its outdoor track athletes twice.” 

There was more uncovered in the report: 

“Even with the roster manipulation, USA Today’s analysis found, Florida State would have still needed to add more than 100 female athletes to reach proportionality — roughly the equivalent of its entire football team.” 

Sophia Villalonga, a goalie on Florida State’s Women’s Collegiate Lacrosse Associates (WCLA) team, thought the situation ultimately presented more opportunities for women’s lacrosse at the school. She and many of her teammates started speaking with prominent Title IX lawyer Arthur Bryant, who threatened legal action against Florida State in early August. 

Villalonga was sitting in her data and network communications class when she found out about the biggest victory in the history of Florida State’s WCLA program, one that has improved in recent years and competed in the USA Lacrosse WCLA National Championship tournament in 2022 and 2023. 

“We haven’t celebrated yet,” Villalonga said Wednesday morning. “We definitely all want to. We have practice tonight, so I’m excited.” 

Florida State’s club team will still exist after the university adds a varsity counterpart. Villalonga said that her goal was always to benefit future lacrosse players, not current club members. Because of the timeline, though, she does hope current freshmen and sophomores will have the ability to try out for FSU’s inaugural varsity team. 

This wasn’t the first time Villalonga and her peers pushed to add a varsity team. She recalled a situation as far back as three years ago in which she met with members of the athletics department but left the meetings with nothing substantive to show for it. 

“We pushed for this,” she said. “It was about making athletics a little more equal in terms of gender. There need to be equal opportunities. Unfortunately, at Florida State, they were not following that rule very well.” 

Interest has already boomed. Within hours of the news, Villalonga said the email inboxes of her and her teammates were flooded with interest from prospective new members. Villalonga, in the second year of her graduate program at FSU, was the team president in 2022 and 2023 but stepped aside this year to let someone else lead. 

“This is like my baby,” she said. “I love this program.” 

On top of adding a Division I women’s team, Florida State will conduct a gender equity review and put together a gender equity plan to ensure it is following Title IX. 

"The only thing that works is women being willing to fight,” Bryant told USA Today after Tuesday’s victory. “I know people don't normally go to their schools to sue them, and I know it's hard ... but what this case shows is that if they fight, they win.”