Boston University Women’s Lacrosse 2013 Player Blog: ‘Everyone falls down’

Boston University Women's Lacrosse 2013 Player Blog: 'Everyone falls down'

The 2013 season is here and we wanted to work closely with college programs to bring a part of the excitement to you. Throughout the 2013 season we will highlight lacrosse programs on our space for all of our readers to follow. Player blogs serve as a unique outlet for programs to showcase their season as it develops, plus highlight everything they have to offer a student-athlete. In contrast, families and fans get a glimpse into the program’s athletic and academic regimen.

Danielle Etrasco
Senior – #13 – Attacker
Boston University

Week 1: Everyone falls down

Hello Lax Playground readers! First time blogger, Danielle Etrasco here. In my fourth and final year as a Boston University attacker, I have been trusted to keep the lax world up to date on the happenings here on Comm Ave.

We just wrapped up our first official week back together on the field, and much to my teammates’ dismay, school. Saturday was our preseason meeting, something I look forward every year and it is a feeling I know all too well. Waiting outside the team room, my teammates making nervous conversation because we all know what is coming. For some, it is the butterflies of season binders where we receive our schedules, practice calendar, travel dates and more. For others, specifically the freshmen, it’s awaiting our fitness testing dates and times. Although for me, it is the infamous Liz Robertshaw season starting speech that you can run a marathon after, or at least believe you can. Here is the tough part- I missed the meeting and luckily for the team and our quads, it wasn’t because I slept in.


Note: Watch this in 1080HD.

I was with Team USA in Philadelphia for the US Lacrosse Convention #laxcon. I did request multiple video recordings but cell phones don’t fly well in team meetings. Instead, I was fortunately given a detailed play-by-play of what went down. Practice was the next morning, and 9 am rolled around quick after a long 48 hours of taking pictures, promoting this summer’s Women’s Lacrosse World Cup and negotiating raffle ticket sales. There was no time to be tired- season has begun.

The first three days on campus brought me back to the sweltering summer days at lacrosse camp; subtract the heat, add snow and you have our lives. Our schedules consisted of eating, playing some lacrosse, eating, more lacrosse, eating again, and finally sleeping. Talk about a crash course. In those three days we summed up everything we worked on all fall, so by the time classes rolled around and we were back to practice once a day we could move forward. We worked hard, so hard that testing was postponed because walking was difficult- can you say “hello hip flexors?”

Overall practices are light and loose but competitive at the same time. Competition comes easy to this team, light and loose is another story. Some days we have our inner squad Red-White battles, but this week brought the Ravens-Patriots rivalry on a team that holds a strong number of New England and Maryland natives. Sorry Pats, you fell on this one. In the midst of the smash talk, it was great to be back on the field shaking off the rust. While the freshmen’s heads were spinning and the sophomores pretended like they knew what was going on, I began to notice a recurring event. Our team falls down. A lot.

I can’t just single out the underclassmen in this, the juniors and even my class are just as guilty. To their credit, our goalies are becoming extremely active but it’s freaking our attackers out. I don’t know if they’re surprised to see our helmeted friends outside of their crease homes, or it’s your classic attack of the turf monster but whatever it is, the mere sight of the goalies made a couple of our crease players drop to the turf. It’s not just limited to practice, the defenders were so excited to get into the dining hall one of them took out about half of our team in her efforts to get to the sandwich line. Most embarrassingly, we hosted a clinic at the end of the week and were encouraged to hop in with the high schoolers. Well, this proved to be quite challenging to a couple of girls and one of our middies graciously demoed how to cradle from the seated position. How did she get there? She tripped over her own two feet. Despite all the bodies hitting the turf our first week of practice was overall a success.

I say this carefully, hopefully without a jinx, this first week has been the best beginning to preseason I’ve experienced. Maybe it’s the notorious man-up drills and crazy stick-work attackers dream of on a practice plan, but deep down it has to be the realization of how fast the next five months will go.

What have I learned this first week? The old Japanese proverb really does hold true: fall seven times, stand up eight.

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