It's not quite a St. Louis-area powerhouse, but the O'Fallon girls lacrosse program, now in its fourth year, is looking stronger than ever.
"It's a different world now," second-year head coach Doug Riddle said. "Four years ago, no one had played, but now the girls are going to summer camps and they've been working hard in the offseason for a couple years.
"Starting last season, some of the St. Louis teams had to take us a little more seriously. We've got 19 girls on the varsity and 18 on the JV, so our numbers are pretty good."
The Panthers made huge strides in 2010, posting a 14-2 record. With a stronger schedule this season, O'Fallon is off to a 3-2 start, but Riddle feels the team may be better. It lost eight girls to graduation, but there are nine seniors on the current roster.
Kaitlin Carpenter (attack) and Alma Stuhldreher (defense wing, attack) are the senior captains, while Mackenzie McIntyre (attack wing, attack, midfielder) is the junior captain. Senior Courtney Jones is the starting goalie.
"Courtney is one of the greatest goalies in the area," Riddle said. "We've had some girls out with injuries, but we just found out that one of our seniors, Naomi Audet (midfield, D-wing, A-wing) is coming back and we're really excited about that."
Junior Jenn Furrow (attack) returns after starting as a sophomore. Other returning starters are junior Brynn Laverdure (center, attack) and seniors Natalie Schmidt (midfield, attack) and Brittany Thompson (defense).
"The last two years, we've been really strong on the attack, but this year we've focused on defense," Riddle said. "We're anchored by Courtney Jones in goal, but Brittany Thompson and (junior) Megan Laney have stepped up big time. Ashley Herbert played lacrosse for the first time last year as a junior and her improvement has been amazing.
"As far as leading in any defensive category, it's going to be Alma Stuhldreher. She has been spectacular for us."
O'Fallon plays host to Barat Academy on Wednesday and will play Thursday at Hazelwood West.
"We haven't gotten to play some of the St. Louis powers like MICDS, John Burroughs or Nerinx, but I think they're going to want to be playing us pretty soon," Riddle said. "We're hanging in there with the private schools and, in the public school division, we're ranked fourth among 16 teams.
"Last year, our goal was to get to the IHSWLA (Illinois High School Women's Lacrosse Association) state finals and we did. We played hard, but we lost our first game up there. It was an experience for us just to get there, but this year we want to get up there and win at least one game.
"Normally, we do the Windy City Tournament in Chicago, but they're not having the tournament this year, so our first experience playing anybody from Illinois will be in the state finals. That's kind of rough, but we don't normally get to scout many of our opponents anyway because so many of us play on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
