The California Lutheran University Regals Lacrosse team celebrated their senior day on Wednesday, April 24 at Oak Park High School against the Redlands Bulldogs.
Due to the rain throughout March and April, the field construction within the William Rolland Stadium is still unfinished. The home game took place at Oak Park High School, which is about a 20-minute drive from Cal Lutheran.
Senior and defender Mia Deck said she is proud of the teamโs progress through the years.
โBeing one of the seniors, G and I have been through it all. Every year weโre building and I think it provides a unique opportunity at the start of every season,โ Deck said.
As her final season comes to an end, Deck said she is excited to see the teamโs hard work pay off with such a successful season.
โIt was really exciting to finally see all the effort and hard work that weโve been working for these past four years to finally pay off,โ Deck said.
Head Coach Laura McIntyre said this is the teamโs first graduating class.
โThey are actually my first four-year seniors that have actually been here for four seasons, and been here through everything,โ McIntyre said.
The first year, Deck said they barely had an entire team to practice with.
โOur first year, it was literally G and I, and maybe one or two other players at the time, that would be at practice. We had no games. It really is rewarding now, four years later, to see all of that work that we put in,โ Deck said.
She said she was thrilled to have such an amazing senior day, with gifts and other fun acts of recognition from her teammates.
โThey went above and beyond what I could have even pictured or imagined. They blew it out of the water, I was not expecting any of that,โ Deck said.
Deck said that the support she felt on her senior day was overwhelming, and she was happy to see so many supporters.
โIt was so overwhelming with the amount of support and love that we received. It was so nice having other people there, because obviously with our games being away the whole season, nobody ever came to our games,โ Deck said.
As the program continues after Deck leaves, she said she is excited to see it continue to grow.
โThe main goal is just to keep building,โ Deck said. โJust seeing that growth continue over the years and get the numbers up.โ
McIntyre said she is also excited to see the successes that the program had this year and said that the two graduating seniors were integral to their success.
โTheyโve literally seen every record for this program get set, and now broken,โ McIntyre said. โItโs just a really really exciting time to celebrate those two, and theyโve just both been such integral parts of this program from on-the-field stuff to off-the-field stuff.โ
As this season comes to an end, and the team begins to look forward to next year, McIntyre said she is preparing the next graduating class.
โI think that theyโre great leaders already too. Knowing that we put so much into this year has really taught them what it takes to have the success that they want. I think that theyโre in a really good position to continue to grow and build moving forward because now theyโve seen a little taste of what it really can look like, and what they really can do,โ McIntyre said. โNow they know how much harder they have to work in the off-season, and then once weโre in season, and what it really takes to commit to doing that if they want to get to that next level, they know how much more itโs gonna take.โ
This season, the team has broken every single record in the books, and McIntyre said that this represents progress within the program.
โRight now, looking at our team records, that to me represents progress and it shows how much better we are statistically,โ McIntyre said.
McIntyre said that theyโve found unique stats that represent how much the program has grown in only a few years.
โWeโve scored more goals this year than shots weโve ever taken before with all three seasons combined,โ McIntyre said. โThereโs so many things like that I look at statistically. That shows clear progress from a statistical standpoint, and it gives us something that we can look to to actually see some of those things.โ
She said she and her team have a dot board that not only tracks their success statistically, as well as mentally.ย
โWe have a dot for the intangibles, for our little wins,โ McIntyre said.
These dots are important to McIntyre because she said some things will never be accounted for statistically that you should still celebrate.
โTo me, there is so much more to sport, and so much more to this team, that theyโre never gonna get an accolade for. No one is ever going to give them a stat for resilience. Youโre never gonna see those kinds of intangible pieces,โ McIntyre said.
The Regalsโ season came to an end on Saturday, April 27, after they dropped their final game of the season 24-2 against the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens.
