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Novice Women's Lacrosse Team Added At UCSB

Oct. 2, 2012

Santa Barbara, CA - A Novice Team has been added to the UCSB Women's Lacrosse program. Fourteen first year UCSB students who have never played organized lacrosse before make up the inaugural UCSB Novice squad. This turnout followed summer long recruitment efforts aimed at enticing beginners to try the sport when they arrived at UCSB. Twenty-seven novices showed for a beginner lesson this past Friday so the 14 coming back three days later is more than a 50% yield from that introduction.

"We will recruit on campus more and get the novice number as close to 20 as we can by January," said UCSB women's lacrosse program director Paul Ramsey. 

Ramsey, who is the head coach for the 'A' Team but oversees the entire program would like to aim for having about 20 players on each of the three UCSB teams. The 14 novices are not the only new faces. Twenty-five first year students who have played organized lacrosse before were also at practice. The 35 new players joined the 11 returning 'A' Team players and 22 returning 'B' Team players from the 2012 season. Chelsea Watkins, who graduated from McDaniel College this past Spring, will coach the UCSB Novice Team. 

"Lacrosse is a rapidly developing sport at all levels throughout the entire Western United States and if we can encourage grassroots development at the college level then we should and we do," continued Ramsey.

"There was a time we fielded just one team here with half the players beginners," added Ramsey, "so this is a bit of us going back to our roots by going hard after novices."

The Gauchos are already one of a select few programs in the nation to carry 'A' and 'B' teams. The UCSB B-Side won the 2012 WWLL 'B' Division championship with a 12-5 win over Cal Poly SLO 'B' on April 22, 2012. The UCSB Novice side will compete as an independent but will play the same regular season schedule as the UCSB 'B' Team, being the follow up game for anyone playing UCSB 'B' in a double header format.