Watching the Sacramento State women’s lacrosse team in action, it’s neither one’s eyes playing tricks on them nor their age getting the best of you the players look young for a reason.

It’s because the majority of the team is comprised of high school players from St. Francis High School.

Sac State’s women’s lacrosse was founded by current coach Lisa Branch in the Fall 2006 semester as a recreational club. It was upgraded to sport club status the following year when the team was accepted into the Western Women’s Lacrosse League and began competing in Division II.

The club originally started with nine members. Now, the team is down to five players. There needs to be at least 12 players in order to field a full team to avoid automatic forfeiture of a game.

But neither the coach nor the players were willing to back down without a fight.

“They’re working hard out there so they deserve to play,” Branch said.

In addition to coaching for the Sac State team, Branch also helps out with coaching at the Sacramento Valley Lacrosse Foundation and the Sacramento Lacrosse Clinic. It was there that Branch met up with longtime friend Kristy Wilson who coaches for the St. Francis High School lacrosse team and where the idea to field her high school students was proposed.

Many of the high school players are enthusiastic about playing in the collegiate level.

Lauren Lewis, a junior at St. Francis, said the only real difference she noticed between playing against other high schools and against college players was in the levels of intensity brought to the games. She said college players tend to be a lot more intense when it came to the game, but otherwise it felt mostly the same.

Her teammate, sophomore Lizzy Brown, said it was “a good experience to go against teams that are not at our level and see what it’s like. It’s a different way to improve.”

The rest of the team echoed the same thoughts and agreed. Even though most of them probably will not play at the professional college sport level, they’d be satisfied playing lacrosse in a recreational sport capacity when they go to college.

But since the team doesn’t officially have 12 players, every game they’ve played has been a forfeit even though the other coaches in the league have agreed to continue their scheduled games with them.

“They’re out there working their butts off everyday ? It’s not fair to them (to not play) since they’ve been out here since October,” Branch said.

The Western Women’s Lacrosse League’s consideration in keeping a team under sport club status is that the team is active and at least attempts to play out all its games and that all the paper work and the $400 dues are turned in on time, Branch said. Even then, a team downgraded from that status is still allowed to compete under a provisional status.

Even though the team is mostly high school students, Branch doesn’t impose any special requirements upon them. All she asks from them is to attend practices and go to the games whenever they can, something to which they all happily oblige to do.

The team’s next biggest concern is with the upcoming away games. The last home game of the season was against the University of San Diego on Sunday and because some of the games will take place hours away from Sacramento none of the St. Francis girls will be able to compete.

This doesn’t deter Branch who’s determined to make sure that her players can play the games they’ve signed up for.

The five mainstay players for Sac State are freshman criminal justice major Natasha Smith, sophomore liberal studies major Laura Mertz, junior recreation, parks and tourism administration major Melissa Davey, and senior liberal studies majors Chiara Adamo and Jessica Oseguera.

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Contact Justin Tejada in the

Sports department at (916) 278-5145