With three years of experience guarding posts from bounce shots and tight corner shots as the girls varsity lacrosse goalie, senior Lada Dementyeva aims to make a great contribution to this year’s season.
“I fully expect Lada to take a leadership role in the team this year. She’s gained a lot of confidence over her four years. She was great as a freshman and she’s without question the leader of the defense and hopefully leader of the whole team this year,” former varsity girls lacrosse head coach Caitlin Ulmer said.
With last year’s JV coach stepping up as the new varsity head coach and the loss of many seniors from last season, it will be crucial for experienced players to step up in order for the team to have a strong leadership.
“Lada, our goalie, is going to be huge because she’s so good and such a strong leader,” head varsity girls lacrosse coach Jesse Rutter said.
As a senior who played on varsity for all four of her high school years, Dementyeva understands the norms and expectations of the team. One of her roles this season includes acting as a mentor to her teammates, who can come to her if they need help with lacrosse fundamentals, school work or a problem among teammates.
“Everybody loves her; she’s great, she’s very positive, she’s got a great attitude, she never gives up and she leads by example. There is nobody who is going to work harder, try harder, pick their head up faster than Lada and it’s easy to follow somebody you believe in,” Ulmer said.
In her freshman year, Dementyeva was pulled up from the JV team because she proved her fearlessness and adaptability to the game, even as a first-year goalie. Since then, she has become much more vocal and has developed her skills in order to help rebuild the young lacrosse team.
As a teammate, Dementyeva also boosts the team’s morale and motivates them with her enthusiasm and positive personality on and off the field. As a goalie, she sets an example for the team.
“Her awkward, funny moments help cheer the team up as well as bring the team together. She’s so good at her job on the field and I don’t know what we would do without her,” senior defenseman Naomi Garcia said.
“It’s going to be such a big change not having Ulmer as a coach, but I have so much trust in Rutter’s coaching capabilities that I know that season will go definitely go smoothly. It’ll be a really different team atmosphere, but it’ll still have that same level of intensity,” Dementyeva said.
The team will play their first game of the season at home against Magruder HS March 22.