July 30, 2008
by Clare Lochary, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
It seems like Lauren Rywak is always around when there's a changing of the guard at George Mason.
In summer 1997, she was an incoming freshman when head coach Jenny Graap decamped for Cornell and ushered in the Amy Bokker era. Rywak was nervous about playing for a coach who hadn't recruited her, but 1998 turned out to be the first winning season in the Patriots' history.
Eleven years later, Rywak is an incoming head coach, hired last week to take over for Bokker, who left George Mason for Stanford on June 16. With a clipboard instead of a stick in her hands, Rywak wants to boost her alma mater to another new level of success.
"I'm very passionate for this sport, and I'm very passionate for Mason," she said. "This is my dream job. Anybody would want to come back to their alma mater. George Mason [lacrosse] was only about five years old when I started. To take it to the next generation is just so exciting."
Rywak, 28, returns to Fairfax after a six-year stint as the inaugural head coach at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. After graduating from Mason in 2002, Rywak spent a year abroad coaching through the English Lacrosse Association's exchange program. Upon her return, she snagged the job with the Gaels at the tender age of 23. At the time, she was the youngest head coach in Division I athletics.
"I was definitely surprised and overwhelmed," said Rywak. "The paperwork on top of all the other drama: 30 girls looking at you every day saying `What are we going to do here?'"
Rywak, a defender from Suffern, N.Y., didn't get into lacrosse until the ninth grade. Playing catch-up with the lax rats forced her to take an intellectual approach to the game that has benefited her as a coach.
"I knew that I had to put in that extra work and teach myself the game," said Rywak. "That's my strength as a coach - I know how to break down the game, break down the drills, and explain it to my athletes."
Rywak led the Gaels to their first winning season (8-7) in 2007, and earned Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Coach of the Year honors for their 7-11 campaign in 2008. She jumped at the chance to return to George Mason, a team that finished 12-5 (including a 15-5 win over Iona on March 13) and climbed as high as No. 7 in the national rankings in 2008.
Much has changed about George Mason since Rywak was a wide-eyed freshman. The school's population has grown 28 percent over the past 11 years, and out-of-state applications jumped 54 percent in the year after the Patriots' men's basketball team's 2006 Final Four run.
"They're not getting GMU and JMU confused any more," said Rywak. "I do think it's important to have diversity on the roster, getting girls from all different areas, to have that flavor on the team."
If Rywak has her way, there will be another Cinderella team in Fairfax.
"Obviously they're in a great place, and will continue to keep making a statement on the national landscape. It's always important to keep that long-term goal in sight," said Rywak.
South Carolina stalls
The University of South Carolina originally planned to add varsity women's lacrosse in 2009; later the start date was pushed back to 2010. Now senior women's administrator Val Sheley says it might be even longer before the Gamecocks take the field.
"They're still building the new baseball field, and we had to get rid of that before we could start on the lacrosse field. As a state institution, it takes a while to get through the planning and approval process, and it's taking longer than anticipated," said Sheley.
"It's like a jigsaw puzzle moving things around. So we're not going to add lacrosse as soon as we had wished."
South Carolina plans to build a dedicated women's lacrosse field on the ground currently occupied by Sarge Frye Field, a 5,000 seat baseball stadium. But the new baseball stadium will not be completed until 2009, and administrators can't risk displacing the baseball team (one of the crown jewels of the Gamecocks' athletic department) to start work on the lacrosse field.
Now spring 2011, or possibly 2012, looks like a more realistic start date for South Carolina lacrosse.
"We thought about using temporary [lacrosse] fields, but that's not how we wanted to start a program," said Sheley. "If things go well, maybe we can add it earlier. But it all depends."
Contact Clare Lochary at clochary@uslacrosse.org.
