Tonight, the pop band Fun. may celebrate the fact that they are young, but don’t accuse the Elon University women’s lacrosse team of saying that.

It would be easy to make that assumption with 21 freshmen on a roster of 25 players. The average age of the team is 18.44 years old.

“It doesn’t matter,” Elon coach Josh Hexter said. “You hear coaches say, ‘Well, you know what, we’re young this year.’ That’s just a built-in excuse to fail. That’s what it is. We are who we are.”

This spring, the Elon women’s lacrosse team will open its inaugural season of play as members of the Atlantic Sun Conference and as a Division I sport. The team is scheduled to play its first game Feb. 7 at No. 6 Duke University.

A quick glance at the team’s roster shows youth. The freshmen are complemented by two seniors and two sophomores who have never played Division I athletics - they were on the club team at Elon - and two coaches, one taking on his first D-I head coaching job and another in her first coaching position ever.

Timeline by Christine Williams.
 

“The newness is exciting,” Hexter said. “I think it’s going to be great. We’re not worried about the fact that we have 21 freshmen on a 25-person roster. We’re just getting after it.”

Getting to face-off

In Feb. 2012, Elon athletic director Dave Blank told The Pendulum that the university was looking at adding swimming, sand volleyball or lacrosse as a women’s sport in an effort to get closer to the gender equity the university desires.

“[At] Elon, we’re generally 60 percent female-enrolled and 60 percent male participant,” he said. “So we’re out of balance. When you look at it from that standpoint, it’s risky to add more men’s opportunities at this point in time.”

Blank indicated at the time that lacrosse was the favorite, and one month later the announcement was made that women’s lacrosse would become an official Division I sport at Elon, beginning play in the 2014 season.

“Women’s lacrosse is growing at an incredible pace, and we are excited to add this opportunity for Elon student-athletes,” Blank said. “Women’s lacrosse is becoming increasingly popular at all intercollegiate levels, and we feel the sport is a strong fit for athletic program.”

Video produced by Christine Williams.
 

On April 28 of that year, Elon announced it had hired Duke women’s lacrosse associate head coach Josh Hexter as the first head coach of the Phoenix.

“It was obvious to me from the beginning that a solid foundation for excellence has been built at Elon and my job now is to extend that excellence to the women’s lacrosse program,” Hexter said following the announcement. “We’ve got a tremendous plan in place and I am looking forward to getting started.”

Former Duke attack Virginia Crotty, who played for Hexter from 2008-2011, was selected as the first assistant coach for the program Aug. 20. She was working at an advertising agency in New York City, something she called a “good out-of-school job.” But her desire was to be down south.

“When Josh called me, I said, ‘Fly me down tomorrow so I can definitely say yes,’” Crotty said. “When I saw the campus and the draw that it would have for a lacrosse program, I thought it was a no-brainer to accept the position.”

When Elon student Tierney Guido first heard the announcement, she immediately called best friend Emily Bishop.

“We were just like, ‘Do we try out? Do we do this?’,” Guido said. “And obviously, our initial response was, ‘Yes, we have to.’”

Guido and Bishop, sophomores and club team players at the time of the announcement, began to prepare for the season. The following year, they, along with then-freshmen Megan Griffin and Kelli Stack, were recruited as the first ever Elon women’s lacrosse players. The four players practiced with Hexter and Crotty last spring, and all agreed that it was extremely helpful.

“They were able to work with us and get used to us,” Hexter said. “[It] really didn’t matter that they’re seniors, it’s more the fact that they had a year to kind of work with us. So when the freshmen come in and have questions about why we’re doing something or what we’re doing, they’ve already done it, so they can kind of help out that way.”

“They bring some leadership. They’re great kids. If we were recruiting people, we would recruit kids like them.”

Top of the pyramid

With a group of 21 freshmen complementing the four upperclassmen and kicking off a program, the coach is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle. The coach’s responsibility is to bring players together and unite as a team.

According to his former boss, Josh Hexter is one of the best men for the job.

“What he really brought to our program was a sense of teaching the fundamentals and helping the girls love the game,” said Kerstin Kimel, the head coach of the women’s lacrosse team at Duke, where Hexter had been an assistant since 2005.

Hexter says the best thing Kimel did for him while he was at Duke was allow him some independence as a coach and most importantly, give him a feel for what it was like to start a program.

Video produced by Christine Williams.
 

Kimel began the Duke women’s lacrosse program in 1996 and has led the Blue Devils to a 230-110 record in her 18 seasons. Her resume: six national semifinal appearances, 16 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances (third longest current streak in the nation), four Atlantic Coast Conference regular season titles and an ACC Tournament Championship, as well as five ACC Coach of the Year awards.

One word, two syllables: success.

Hexter leaned on Kimel for advice when he was first hired, as Duke was in the NCAA Tournament at the time. But when he arrived at Elon, he went off his own way.

And when he needed an assistant coach, Crotty was a choice that made it easy to adjust. She was a low attacker at Duke, and Hexter coached attack.

“We always had a good, working, solid relationship, very honest,” Crotty said. “That, to me, was really important, I think it was for him as well. It’s nice that we know each other, didn’t have to break through those walls at first.”

The players say they’ve benefitted greatly from both of the coaches already.

“They know what they’re talking about, they have a ton of experience,” said Elle Hvozdovic, a freshman midfielder. “I specifically take the draw, so I’ve been working a lot on the draw with them and they’ve really been helping my game. They’re really good at picking out exactly what you need to work on to help you become a better player.”

Developing a chemistry

So how exactly does one build chemistry on a team with 21 first-years?

“We read poetry yesterday and then we kind of talked about that,” Hexter said. “Then we just try to do something things where the girls get together and share and just talk about things - what are we afraid of, what do we want - and start to talk about who we are.”

It’s a challenge that Hexter says he was ready to face head-on, one of the many that just might show up with starting a new program.

For leadership, Elon will look to the examples it found in the former club players who have a year of Hexter’s coaching under their belts.

Thinglink by Christine Williams, photo by Christine Williams.
 

Bishop, one of those ex-club players and a senior attack, echoes Hexter’s sentiments about the advantage of youth.

“Since there is no team dynamic already in place, it’s much easier to just build one,” Bishop said. “It’s not like there’s interruptions or anything. I think it’s an advantage because we just get to create a dynamic, we don’t have to worry about bringing [the freshmen] into one that already exists.”

And Hexter is excited to put together the pieces of the puzzle.“Every player’s got a bright spot, you’ve just got to find that and put it into play and the kids are doing great so far,” he said.

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Hvozdovic acknowledged the challenges that having a young team brings, but says there’s no intimidation in facing more experienced opponents.

“For us, I think we just have to take it as a learning experience and watch and see how they play and try to reflect that in the way we play,” Hvozdovic said. “They have a step up on us from playing longer, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a chance playing against them. Our team in particular has a ton of hustle and grit and we’re able to put 110 percent into everything, so I think if we’re willing to put in the work and the time, we’ll be just as good as those other teams.”

Reasonable expectations

Kimel’s Duke team went 3-12 in her first year, but it didn’t take long for the program to experience success. The Blue Devils made the Final Four in 1999, Kimel’s fourth season, but she says there’s a difference now to having that path to success.

“Starting off now, there’s so many more teams, the game has grown so much, it’s even more competitive now than it was 18 years ago,” Kimel said. “I think it is a daunting task but also a really fun one because there is a place for everybody in Division I and it’s exciting that Elon has that challenge ahead of them.”

Hexter shies away from talk of particular records or championships.

"The only goals that we set are just to get better every day,” he said. “I don’t want to set goals that could potentially limit us. We’re pretty realistic in what we want to do, but when you get right down to it, what’s most important is to live in that moment and get better every day.”

Video produced by Christine Williams.
 

Crotty thinks Elon has the potential to be a strong lacrosse school like Duke, and perhaps even be a Final Four team in five or six years thanks to the athletes the program is drawing in and the teams the Phoenix will play.

“A lot of people shake us off, they’re doubting it,” Crotty said. “But I would say, with all the materials we have here, I think it is realistic.”

“We want to set the bar really high. We want girls who are looking at Elon to know we’re going to set the bar really high."

Guido puts that bar at conference championship level.

“For the team, I want a conference championship,” she said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we can do it. I think we have the skill, the heart, the hustle. It’s definitely in our sight. It’s definitely in our realm of possibility.”

A word Hexter constantly used when speaking about developing his team was “fun.”

“What I really like is we don’t complain and we don’t whine,” Hexter said. “We’re out there and we’re having fun, there’s no doubt about it. But we’re trying to work really hard, and they’re going with it and they’re getting better every day.”

And getting better every day, he says, is the key to building a successful team, despite all the challenges a young team brings.

“Trying to build a powerhouse program, hopefully, and thinking long-term, really, even those powerhouse teams now think in the moment and they’re just trying to get better every day,” Hexter said. “And when you start to be able to think like that and live like that, then all of a sudden, you’re racking up some wins.”