Moorpark College is proud to offer various women’s sports opportunities for students to participate in, including women’s basketball, soccer, golf, volleyball, wrestling and many more. However, one sport is lacking from this list and is now emerging as a club: women’s lacrosse.
Women’s Lacrosse Club was officially established in the fall 2023 semester. Still, founder Keira Harley has been working on creating the team since the beginning of her first semester at Moorpark College in the fall of 2022.
Harley began playing lacrosse at a young age, starting around the fourth grade at the age of nine, and continued playing until her sophomore year of high school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. After being away from the sport for about two years, Harley decided she wanted to try to pick up the sport again in college and went looking for a team to join.
Harley says that’s when she “fell into the position” of founding the women’s lacrosse team. As she looked into joining women’s lacrosse, she met with Moorpark College athletic director Matt Crater. He answered earnestly when she asked him if Moorpark had already established a women’s lacrosse team.
“No, but you’re going to start one,” Crater declared.
Women’s lacrosse is still considered a club sport rather than an athletic team, so they have faced some challenges as they’re creating the team.
“A club is usually not taken as seriously as an intercollegiate team or athletic program due to less funding or fewer members,” Harley explained.
In addition to those obstacles, it was also difficult for the group to find a coach for women’s lacrosse in the area. Fortunately, some players from Moorpark’s football team have stepped up to help them get the team started with training, organization and conditioning drills.
Nica Friedman, a lacrosse team member and the team’s social media manager, said that Raiders football players David Ware Jr., Je’Von Evans and Shyne Kalilikane McMoore have found a workaround for lacrosse coaching.
“[It’s] a way to bind their knowledge of their game with ours. While none of them have ever played the sport, they have introduced us to new drills, footwork and lots of conditioning,” Friedman stated.
As the team is still growing, the four captains – Keira Harley, Via Harris, Katie Guardado and Kourtney Carter – aim to encourage women at Moorpark to join the team. Their practices consist of around 12 to 15 players, more than the group expected, but a great start to growing their team.
Interested students can click the team’s Linktree or visit the team’s Instagram page for more information regarding the women’s lacrosse team.
