Of the 12 high-school girls lacrosse programs in Arizona, only one is in Tucson.
The Tucson Storm, a division II varsity team, has 14 members. It takes 12 to field a team.
When players can't make it to games or get hurt, the team often plays one player down, as the team did March 6 against Phoenix Country Day School and Phoenix Mountain Pointe Pride.
The Storm won both games, upping their record to 3-3, already better than last season's 2-11 mark.
"We need girls. We need girls," said Ann Dernier, the team's manager. "We'll teach them what they need to know."
The Storm's coach, Zack Brink, echoed Dernier's concern.
"We generally don't have a ton of people on the team, so I have to ask them to play different positions," he said, adding that the girls are "very mature and resilient" about it.
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Even though all the players happen to attend Catalina Foothills High School, Dernier said any high-school girl in the Tucson area can be part of the team; there are no tryouts.
The Storm practices at Manzanita Elementary School and plays its games at either Orange Grove Middle School or Lincoln Park.
One disadvantage of being the only team in Tucson is that The Storm has to play double-headers almost every Saturday of the season. Phoenix teams play Wednesday and Saturday, but the girls can't travel mid-week, so they're forced to double-book on weekends.
Dernier recruited only at Catalina Foothills this year because she was told the team might get school sponsorship if 90 percent of its players attended the school. That didn't happen, so she plans on recruiting at more schools next year.
The process will start in the fall, so new team members have a few months to learn the sport before they compete.
"We have a long preseason so even if you've never played before, you have a long time to learn the sport," said Brianna Eklund, one of the team's captains.
"It's a good time to start because there's not much competition," Dernier said. "You're not going to sit on the bench."
While some of the team's funding comes from local businesses - this year the team is sponsored by Jim Click and the Smith Law Group - parents shoulder most of the costs.
Jenna Adler, the Storm's other captain, worries that when she and the six other seniors graduate there won't be enough girls to make a team. "I just hope the sport continues to grow as a whole in Arizona," she said.
get involved
For more information about the Tucson Storm, call Ann Dernier at 235-1642.
Melody Bartholomew is a University of Arizona journalism student apprenticing at the Star. Contact her at 807-7776 or at starapprentice@azstarnet.com
