All it took was a student with a passion and desire for women's lacrosse to get the team started up again on DePauw's campus.
Freshman Katie Sherrill played lacrosse throughout her Noblesville High School career and came to DePauw wanting to continue playing her sport.
"I really wanted to make sure that I was going to be able to keep playing, and the fact that DePauw didn't have a team wasn't that big of a deal to me," she said. "Starting a team was always an option, so I went with it."
There have been numerous attempts to start up lacrosse programs at DePauw — the men's lacrosse team is in their fourth season now, and the women have been trying to get enough people to field a team for years. These previous failures at forming a lacrosse team gave Sherrill the confidence to start up the program.
Junior Kyle Scully has also been instrumental in starting the team. Scully, who played lacrosse at her high school in Ohio, came to DePauw looking to play lacrosse, but focused her attention on another sport.
"I'm from Cincinnati, and lax is a big deal there," she said. "When I was a freshman, I was really interested in playing lacrosse in college, but because DePauw did not have a team, I ended up playing tennis instead."
Although these women have been successful in getting the new program started thus far, there is still work to be done. Scully said they have about 10 committed players, and they need 12 women to play.
Scully could not be more impressed with the work Sherrill has put into the process.
"I was so impressed with her determination and commitment to this team that I jumped at the opportunity to play," Scully said.
Various types of advertising the team on campus — including an interest meeting in the fall, a post on e-services, an e-mail to sororities and sidewalk chalk — has recruited a number of girls who have never played lacrosse before.
"We've been doing everything we can to get our name out there," Scully said. "The biggest thing that has helped us is just talking it up, and we're continuing to do so because we could always use more players."
As of now, the team has had trouble scheduling games because of the lack of nearby teams. The team is scheduled to play games against Purdue University, Taylor University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology but is looking for more teams in the area to play.
The team will have their first practice next week and will look to gain numbers and have a successful first year.
