A green arm band marks you.
As a club player, once you showed up to the field with a lime green band around your bicep it was, “Oh shoot, she’s committed.” And then the follow up question was always, “What school?”
I can speak for the majority of high school girl club lacrosse players that right when you stepped foot on the turf, you scanned the field to see how many green arms there were. The band meant you were playing with girls already committed to play in college, they stood out. Ironically enough, the girls who didn’t have green arm bands stood out just as much by basically screaming, “Hey, I’m not committed yet! Please watch every move I make and ask me to play for your school!”—so yes, naturally that was me.
Coming from Carroll County, where you’re practically born with a stick in your hand, playing college ball defined your worth and proved that you meant something, or at least you had plans to mean something throughout the next four years. It seemed like every tournament a different teammate came with a green arm band... so no doubt, the pressure was on.
There was this anticipation and discomfort whenever we had to talk about our future lacrosse career. It was full of unknowns and endless questions. The whole recruiting process was such a game—you had to make sure you shared enough to be desirable and prove yourself both on and off the field, but you didn’t want to share too much or you would seem too eager. It felt like we were just transactional pieces to a coaches’ future “game plan,” an “X” or “O” on a whiteboard. All stereotypes of the recruiting process seemed true—all until I met Coach.
Coach was personal and genuine. She cared.
