Lacrosse: For college options, join the club

Ponchione’s ease may come from the fact that she performed well in front of the college recruiters, especially in the Jackals’ last tournament of the season, the All-Star Express Championships. In a nine-game stretch, she had four shutouts, adding to the two she had at the National Draw club tournament earlier in the summer. That performance drew interest from several Division I lacrosse programs, including the Naval Academy.

‘‘That’s definitely somewhere that I am looking at going,” Ponchione said of Navy.

The club season, however, also presents some different twists to what is often becoming a year-round lacrosse season. Among Ponchione’s teammates were Holy Cross’s Christina Benedetti and Katie Delaney. Rivals during the school year often become teammates in the summer, but school pride takes a back seat to the common goal of winning.

‘‘Usually that is not an issue,” Jackals coach Mike Haight, who is also Good Counsel’s coach, said. ‘‘I don’t really get to watch a lot of the inter-county games during the season, so I don’t know if they ever have problems getting along, but I just come out and say how it is for us. We are just trying to get the most out of our players that we can.”

In pursuit of that goal, many players set aside school allegiances. Ponchione described playing with Delaney and Benedetti as ‘‘fun,” while rising B-CC senior Leslie Grill concurred. Among the players on the Jackals’ elite roster are Grill, Quince Orchard’s Hannah Seligman and Alissa Peterson, and Poolesville’s Stephanie Hilton. The Montgomery County Public School products quickly bonded.

‘‘They turned out to be my best friends on the team,” Grill said. ‘‘I really liked all of my teammates, but the public school girls were sort of drawn together. We kind of had the same experiences in school and we knew a lot of the same people.”

Not that everything is always so friendly. Grill admits that she is less than forthcoming about her own strengths and weaknesses to her new teammates, while keeping an eye out for theirs for when she comes across them during the high-school season. She is not alone.

‘‘Especially as a defender, I look at the attackers and see what they can do,” Hilton said. ‘‘I try to take notice who likes to go to their right or to their left, and where they like to shoot. It helps to know their tendencies when I play against them during the high-school season.”

However, for Grill, who scored 14 goals and had 18 draw controls at the All-Star Express tournament while playing center and attack wing, and Hilton, a rising senior for the Falcons who is looking at Mount St. Mary’s and Pfeiffer (N.C.) University, the purpose of playing over the summer was twofold. First, it was an opportunity to play at a level higher than that normally seen in the public schools, and second, it was a chance to get some help navigating through the sometimes complex recruitment process.

‘‘The kids make a list of the schools they like, and we go through it together,” Haight said. ‘‘But, they are pretty self-aware as to where they are going to fit in. I tell them up front where I think they are, whether it is as a low D-I player of a high D-III player, and they usually agree. But then I spend a lot of time getting those coaches on the phone and telling them about that player, and making sure that the kids are sending e-mails to coaches. If a club coach does not help [with recruitment] it is hard. The high-school season is a dead period in recruiting, and a lot of coaches aren’t going to pick up and come to games. You need to have exposure in the summer.”

For Grill, that exposure led to interest from the University of Maryland women’s lacrosse program, as well as Queens (N.Y) College, Old Dominion (Va.) and St. Joseph’s (Pa.). She has not yet made a decision but does not regret a summer spent on a lacrosse field rather than the beach.

‘‘Playing club was awesome,” she said.

For others, like Delaney, there was pressure to perform, but she did not let it overwhelm her.

‘‘It’s hard not to think about the pressure to play well,” Delaney, from Silver Spring, said. ‘‘There are college coaches on the sidelines of every tournament. I just try not to let it get to me too much.”

In Ponchione’s case, her play not only got her noticed, but led to invitations to another recruitment venue, the summer lacrosse camps at college programs. Ponchione attended camps at Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Navy and Duke, and will continue to play through the fall and winter, as is the case for many aspiring collegiate athletes in an era of sports specialization.

‘‘You have to keep training,” she said. ‘‘We’re going to do that in the fall and then we are going to play in an indoor league in the winter. We’re going to play all year, pretty much.”