"Hey, wanna go out for lacrosse?"
"Sure. But you'll have to teach me the rules, and what do you call that thing they carry around?"
That was approximately the conversation in the late winter of 2009 between Sara Feldhusen and several of her Lourdes classmates. In 2008, Feldhusen was on the lacrosse club team and was one of the players from that team who was trying to recruit athletes for the John Marshall/Lourdes team that was helping launch Minnesota State High School League-sanctioned lacrosse in Rochester in 2009.
"I had no idea," Hanna Larson said. "I didn't know how to hold the stick."
A mere couple of dozen months or so later, it's much different. Feldhusen is joined by two of those '09 recruits -- Larson and Reese DiCecco -- to form an effective trio of attackers as JM/Lourdes begins the 2011 season.
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"Our goals are together, not individual," Larson said.
"There's no competition between us," Feldhusen said.
"If I had a bad game, one of the others would pick up the slack," DiCecco said.
DiCecco had a special knack for scoring goals last season, with three or four in a game being the norm for her. In fact, in just over two seasons of lacrosse, she has impressed enough to land a spot on a Minnesota select traveling team where she'll have a chance to show her skills this summer in front of college coaches.
"It shows the growth of the sport in Rochester," said JM/L coach Maureen Sanderson, who has long been active in promoting lacrosse in the city.
Sanderson says the threesome are a nice blend of styles.
"Sara played two years as a goalie and she has emerged as an attacker with a scrappy style and a strong stick. With her personality, she needs to be out on the field; and she's a runner.
"Hanna has finesse. Her running and cradling are smooth and polished, and she dodges defenders.
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"Reese has a great stick, with good upper-body strength and good power on her shots. And she's hungry for goals, but she looks to see who's open, and makes good decisions on when to take it one-on-one."
Feldhusen and Larson are seniors and DiCecco is a junior.
"We all try to work off each other," DiCecco said.
"We know how each other play, so we feed off that," Feldhusen said.
The team was 10-5 last year after going 4-8 in that 2009 season.
"Our first game was not fun," Larson said, recalling the '09 opener.
"We did a lot of chalk talks," DiCecco said. There were a lot of rules and basic techniques to learn.
Not anymore.
