Standing on the Eagle’s crest in the middle of Davis Field, a yellow lacrosse ball jammed between her and her opponent’s lacrosse sticks, Hannah Bollar (11) awaits the referee’s impending whistle to start the draw. Hannah plays most positions, but is officially a midfielder and co-captain of the Varsity Lacrosse team.

Unknown to her, while playing after-school volleyball back in 7th grade, a club lacrosse team was also practicing on the grass field right next to the middle school. She picked up lacrosse on a whim when her volleyball coach motivated her to try it out. Every week, she would skip two days of volleyball practice a week to go over the fence at the back of the middle school, walk near the tennis courts and play lacrosse instead.

With an athletic background that blossomed from her enrollment in various sports as a child, Hannah said she had good hand-eye coordination when she first started, which is a major factor in playing lacrosse. After playing for one year, she put in countless hours practicing throwing the ball against a wall and fieldwork with her dad in order to improve her stick skills.

Throughout both middle school and a portion of high school, Hannah played both club lacrosse and school volleyball, which combined on some days, continued until 9 p.m. She primarily continued to play lacrosse because she wanted to have playing time in freshman year – but a little playing time turned into much more, and from then on she got more seriously involved. In her sophomore year of high school, Hannah decided to “ramp up on lacrosse” and slowly, she drifted away from volleyball.

Although she loved playing volleyball, her club coach used charts to determine who would play in games rather than weigh it upon how much effort a player put into the game, and that eventually led her to chose lacrosse over volleyball.

“You would put in all this effort [and] make an amazing playback,” she said. “[But] maybe you were out of position slightly, [or if] you made the final mistake, that was a mark against your name.”

Unlike volleyball, mistakes in lacrosse are salvageable and don’t leave a black mark next to your name.

“Lacrosse has a way of [fixing mistakes],” she said. “If you make a mistake, you can still go back and fix it; you can still bust your ass and prove to the coaches, ‘That was just a mistake, but I am still good. I still love what I’m doing.’”

As a senior next year, Hannah will continue to play as a midfielder, but as for this summer, she will play and coach for the BearLax lacrosse club and in other tournaments.