Augustana’s women’s lacrosse team has officially kicked off their fall ball season as of Monday, Sept 23. Their fall season consists of morning lifts and afternoon practices, as well as preparing for a tournament of scrimmages at the end of the season, all to prepare for the spring 2025 season ahead.

Fall ball focuses on conditioning and team dynamics, with an emphasis on evaluating player positions and strengths. The season is more about getting back into the swing of things as a team so that they can easily go into spring training. 

“We do pretty much the same thing that we do in spring,” sophomore Taylor Ackland said. “We do more conditioning in the fall so we have a baseline for where [coach] thinks we’re gonna be in the spring, so she formulates practices with lots of basic stick work.”

The women’s lacrosse program has grown its team significantly since the end of the 2024 spring season, with nine new members. In total, the team has 24 players, which is a big improvement from previous years. 

“We’re looking pretty good,” junior Elena Bechard said. “I’m feeling good because we get subs, and everyone who’s coming in has played before. Freshman year, we had to go around and basically recruit people on campus, so this is beautiful.”

The team’s growth in numbers and experience has the players feeling very optimistic about the upcoming season and their ability to be more competitive. They are in a significantly better place than they were at the end of the 2024 spring season, with that being a building year for the program. 

“We’re very excited for this year because of all the work we put in last year was to get to a better point this year,” Ackland said. “We had lots of people working hard over the summer, so we’re in. We’re just starting in a better place than we were last year.”

With this newfound confidence and growth, the team has a new goal for the fall ball season: “hashtag winning.” This motto is meant for whenever the team does something well and makes good progress. The “hashtag winning” goal aligns with the team’s overall aim to build on their success from last year and achieve bigger and better results this season. 

“Hashtag winning” has become the rallying cry and overarching objective that the coach has set for the team as they prepare for the upcoming spring season through their fall ball practices and scrimmages.

“Not specifically winning the game, but winning as a team,” junior Madison Langewisch said. “Basically, we want to work on success and teamwork this year, especially now that we have a lot more girls and we’re not going to be tired. We don’t have to play the whole game; we’ll have subs. Just being healthy overall.”