Laxwomen Experience Injuries as Team Matures

The number of Radcliffe sports has grown steadily in the past few years. There are now 11 Radcliffe varsity sports, compared to 20 for Harvard, the oldest being heavyweight crew, which is presently finishing its sixth season. Most of the other sports are in their third season.

But with this expansion, Radcliffe sports has experienced the scourge of athletics: injuries. This year, the Radcliffe lacrosse team has lost two starters for the season and a few others for shorter periods.

Now, two players have a thigh taped and two more wear a knee-brace on one knee. In addition, three more players have been out for part of the season with mononeucleosis.

Plague of Injuries

This plague of injuries may help explain the laxwomen's current record of 0-8, but the explanation for the injuries is not obvious.

Debi Field, coach of the Radcliffe lacrosse team, views the injuries as a result of bad luck and emotional and physical stress. "A lot of it is freak things that happen, like in a game situation rather than in practice," Field said last week.

"I don't think women here have been as physically and emotionally involved as they have this year. They've been put under a lot of stress that they've not used to," she added.

Field said that there were not as many injuries during the field hockey season because most of the players were in pretty good basic shape from summer activity. But over the winter, most of the players were not very active.

"It could be that people are playing harder," laxwomen captain Carlene Rhodes said last night, trying to explain the large number of injuries. "If you don't put out as much as you can, you don't get injured."

Rhodes said that there have been a lot of muscle injuries, which probably resulted from poor conditioning.

Mars Child, who Field described as the fastest player on the team, is out for the season with torn ligaments in her right leg.

"I think it has a lot to do with conditioning," Child said last week from a bed in Stillman Infirmary. "We don't have as intense conditioning as the men."

"If we want to be a competitive varsity team, we need long-term conditioning," she added.

Maude Wood is another potential starter who is out for the season. Wood injured her knee during the basketball season, and let it heal for two months before she started playing lacrosse. Three days after the laxwomen returned from their summer trip, she reinjured it.

Wood interprets her injury as a freak accident. But she attributes the muscle injuries to a lack of warning up before games. The warm-ups are more important now because "people have gotten more serious."

"Just the fact that Harvard is taking us more seriously has made us more serious. We practice at Soldiers Field now. When I was a freshman, we practiced in the Radcliffe Quad," she continued.

"The quality of coaching has gone up and the amount of the men's interest in Radcliffe sports has gone up."

Carrie Minot, the laxwomen's hottest scorer, has had her season shortened by tearing the soft tissue in her ankles.

"I don't know why there are so many injuries this year," Minot said. "Last year I rowed before I started playing. This year I was in worse shape."

"I think it's really bad luck," Minot continued. "It's pretty depressing going out every day and finding one more person gone."

The common thread running through all of the explanations for the injuries is that Radcliffe women are beginning to take their sports more seriously.

Right now, the Radcliffe lacrosse program is experiencing growing pains which have manifested themselves in injuries. It's difficult to jump right to the top of a sport without having the experience, unless you're the first one ever to do it.

Thus, the Radcliffe heavyweight crew is the best in the country because it was one of the first in the country. Crew members do extensive conditioning to insure that they stay on top.

But other Radcliffe teams are just maturing now. They are developing a core of players who are serious about their sport and who will give their teams the experience they need to be competitive on the collegiate level.

The number of injuries should decrease in the future because Radcliffe atheletes will prepare themselves better mentally and physically as they realize that sports are important. and not just a way to kill an afternoon.