Jana Bradley, Kate Fleming and Anna Poponyak get by with a little help from their friends. The three female lacrosse
players all hail from La Costa Canyon High School, a coastal community school of about 3,000 students approximately halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.
Bradley and Fleming, best friends since kindergarten, met Poponyak their freshman year in high school. The three have rarely been apart since.
“We knew from almost the very beginning (of recruiting) it was a packaged deal,” head coach Jen Larsen said.
The beginning started in
December of the girls’ senior year. Lacrosse had always been “a fun season” for the three, as field hockey and soccer were the more serious sports in their beach community.
But prior to their final lacrosse season, La Costa Canyon hired Kristy Gallagher and Katie Dolan, former Richmond lacrosse
players, to coach its lacrosse team. The two All-Atlantic-10 athletes completely overhauled the program and gave their seniors the confidence they needed to look at playing beyond high school.
“They got us to realize we were good enough to play on the college level,” Poponyak said.
The girls, who had only picked up the sport as ninth graders, sent out highlight tapes to schools all along the West Coast. Larsen, who had already signed 17 athletes when she
received the trio’s highlight reel, began calling to gage interest. She soon realized she was
recruiting not just one or two athletes, but all three.
“I would make one call and all three would get on the phone,” Larsen said with a smile.
But the future Ducks still weren’t convinced they were
Division I material. They traveled to Eugene in February for a lacrosse clinic, but still didn’t know what the future had in store for them. Then Larsen visited.
The girls who used lacrosse as a fun interlude between other seasons now had a big-time head coach travel almost 1,000 miles to see them in person.
“It was crazy,” Fleming said.
The move paid off. Bradley signed immediately and
Fleming eventually chose the Ducks over California, in part
because of Larsen’s trip south. Poponyak then gave a verbal
commitment, and the pals from “So Cal” were set.
“We never thought we’d all go to college together,” Poponyak said.
Three ‘sisters’ with
three different talents
Although the Ducks describe themselves as “more like sisters than friends,” they are far from identical. Bradley, the team’s leading scorer with eight goals, is as quiet
and modest off the field as she is
aggressive and determined on it.
“She brings a lot of speed,” Larsen said. “She’s the leader of our (transition).”
When pressed about her five-goal break-out game against Denver, Bradley shrugs it off as a fluke. Of the three friends, she is the quietest, letting Fleming and Poponyak do
most of the talking. But on the field, Bradley is the Ducks’ most potent
offensive threat. She has scored in all three of Oregon’s games and began
to see double teams on Sunday,
thereby opening up shooting lanes for other players.
Fleming, a midfielder, has seen most of her action this season
as a spark plug off the bench.
After breaking her nose last week
in practice, the former soccer star
immediately promised she would be ready for the UC Davis game. Playing with a small nose splint that restricted her breathing, Fleming almost
single-handedly willed the Ducks back into contention against the
Aggies with two second-half goals.
“This break-out game was
awesome for her,” Larsen said. “She was really fired up.”
While all three girls have faced
the typical freshman-athlete struggles of finding confidence and learning new roles on a new team, Poponyak, the verbal leader of the group,
has faced an additional hurdle after injuring her knee.
The left-handed goalkeeper had
surgery Nov. 5 on her right knee
after tearing her anterior cruciate
ligament in fall workouts. Fortunately,
Poponyak had her girls at her side.
“It was really nice having them,” she said.
Fleming and Bradley drove their crutch-bound pal wherever she
needed to go and helped her around her dorm. Poponyak has now thrown herself into physical therapy and looks forward to being cleared May 1.
“She’s done a wonderful job of
doing her treatment, keeping herself in shape, getting herself stronger
and keeping her quickness up,” Larsen said.
Interestingly, all three Ducks
struggled with their confidence after arriving in Eugene.
“We really thought we’d be on the bench, and none of us would play,” Poponyak said.
Incredulous as it now sounds, they were also worried about making the travel squad.
“We were worried we could never compete with (the east coast girls),” Bradley said.
“We really had to show them that they were actually qualified to be on the team and quite good,” Larsen said. “Getting that confidence and having them believe was one of the biggest things.”
With their best lacrosse still
ahead of them, the “Cali girls” have overcome their limited experience
to become key players in the Ducks’ inaugural season.
“That’s the biggest upside is that they have so much to learn … about the game,” Larsen said. “They have some of the things you can’t teach.”