The lacrosse team put up a good fight against North Creek High School on April 19 and scored five goals shared between sophomores Jacob Lubatti and Oliver Zorich, and Juniors Ethan Ballwebber, and David Reed. Sophomore goalie Broden Griner (he/him) was a defensive powerhouse when it came to protecting the goal, providing 23 saves.
We followed up with junior Alex Bakalov (he/him) who has been playing lacrosse since fourth grade. He said that the main goal for both him and the team is to continue to have fun and improve. Achieving improvement comes with pushing the team to their highest potential through hard repetition and preparation.
“The hardest part is the conditioning. We don’t do that much conditioning now because we have games every other day. But the first two weeks, we did a lot of conditioning, and I guess that’s the hardest part because not that many people like conditioning,” said Bakalov.
In addition to conditioning, the team would like to focus on improving this season even after wins.
“It’s basically the same, just improving as a team and just trying our best to have a good season. Let’s say we play a game and identify something that we need to improve on, then the next practice we kind of go over it and try to improve it so we do better next game,” said Bakalov.
They may work hard even when they dislike conditioning, but fun comes easy for the team. Bakalov said the team is all very close and has great chemistry, especially when it comes to winning. They celebrate each win together on the field, running together and cheering.
“They jump the goalie. It’s not bad. Everyone just ran up to the goalie and — not aggressively — just punches in the shoulder,” said Griner, who is on the receiving end as goalie.
Bakalov and Griner both agree that their team’s rivals include Bothell and more recently, North Creek. One of Bakalov’s favorite memories was a game with Bothell.
“I think it’s my freshman year or sophomore year; we beat Bothell on like a double overtime; that was fun,” said Bakalov.
For context, overtime is when both teams are tied at the end of the game, so an additional quarter is added until either team scores in order to break the tie. For two overtime quarters to be added is a rare occurrence in any sport.
Lacrosse is an unofficial sport across most of Washington due to several issues. The Washington High School Lacrosse Association addresses some of the issues in their Rationale for Sanctioning.
“WIAA sanctioning is a long process and requires the efforts of all people involved in boys lacrosse. The key to our effort is a grassroots push amongst the lacrosse community to get our message out to school administrators and athletic directors who will ultimately decide our fate. Without the support of these school officials, sanctioning lacrosse will be very difficult.”
Griner added that being an unofficial sport does not help with generating lacrosse interest in general since it is a niche sport. Despite their unofficial status, the team is motivated to succeed and have fun.
