We usually see are hoards of new students and construction on buildings. The past few years, however, have brought exciting new changes to the Spartan community. 2012 introduced men’s lacrosse, 2013 saw a national championship in baseball and 2014 has introduced women’s lacrosse.
In October 2012, it was announced that Kelly Gallagher would start as UT’s first women’s lacrosse coach for the spring 2014 season. She had previous experience coaching at Limestone College in South Carolina from 2011-12 and Detroit-Mercy from 2008-2011. Gallagher didn’t waste any time with the recruiting process and set out to find the best players to mold into the perfect team.
“As soon as I got here [UT], I started putting kind of feelers out to the different people I know across the country looking for people to play,” Gallagher said. “I didn’t really know what the interest was going to be on campus versus out in the greater world, so I just kind of started putting it out to people that I knew.”
Little did she know, however, that interest was going to be very high both on campus and off.
“What ended up happening was there was a big response on campus,” Gallagher said. “There was like 40 girls initially when I first got here in October.”
From that initial group of girls, Coach Gallagher was able to conduct a mini spring season for the team, running them through conditioning drills, stick work and full on practices.
Throughout this process, she traveled around to different schools, looking for players to bring back. She ended up bringing back 27 freshmen to play, including people she recruited and people who contacted her.
The process, Gallagher said, wasn’t hard, even though the program is still in its infant stages.
“Honestly, UT is a great academic institution… I think the hardest thing I had was just getting people to set a date to get on the airplane and come down,” Gallagher said. “A lot of these kids are really excited about starting a program and getting to put their name on something.”
The first opponent the Spartans play are no strangers to the UT community. Rollins College made it all the way to the semi-finals of last year’s championship before losing to Limestone College, who then lost in the finals. Both teams will visit Naimoli Field this season with Rollins as the first and last games for the Spartans’ season.
“They’re kind of our bookends, so we’ll play them the first game and the last game of the season,” Gallagher said. “It will be a really good marker of how much we’ve improved over the course of the season.”
Tess Hooker is the only senior on the team this year. Even though she said the younger players look up to her, it’s more from an academic perspective.
“I’m basically a freshman on the team,” Hooker said. “This is my first year, too. In a sense, we’re all freshmen.”
With such a large group of girls playing together for the first time, there’s bound to be some friction. But not in this case, according to Hooker.
“Some of the playing styles are the same since we’re from the same area,” Hooker said. “But we also have people from Florida and Minnesota and Ohio. So, it’s weird, because they all mesh. Coming back from preseason, you’d think we’d all been playing together for years.”
Whatever Gallagher is doing seems to be working. The athletic department is fired up, the girls are ready to show their skills and the spring season is almost underway as the countdown winds down to their first game Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m.
With over 15 years of experience under Gallagher’s belt, there’s no question where this program is headed.
Layla Souchet can be reached at layla.souchet@spartans.ut.edu