Lacrosse Gaining Popularity at Dunwoody High School

As players' families urge DeKalb County to sanction lacrosse, action on Dunwoody High's field is approaching a fever pitch.

The school's boys club team is coming off a successful second season and its girls a breakthrough first, and both are chomping at the bit to join neighboring counties' teams in the Georgia High School Association.

"We have great athletes and can become a really great team," said boys coach Evan Goldberg, who took over after this season's 0-2 start. "This is something these guys will be able to look back on years down the road, when Dunwoody is a lacrosse powerhouse in the state."

Dunwoody's boys went from winning only two games as a rag-tag club at Tucker High in 2010 to an 11-7 record this year and a championship in the lower bracket of North Georgia Lacrosse League playoffs. That was fulfilling for the team's 28 players, only six of whose players graduated.

Having begun 0-3, Dunwoody's boys won consecutive games mid way through the season against club teams from Henry County and Brookwood Highs and an all-star team from the city of Alpharetta. After concluding the regular season with victories over King's Ridge and Sequoyah and teams from Cumming and Gwinnett County, Dunwoody rebounded from an 0-1 start in the playoffs with three wins.

The key, Goldberg said, was focusing on basics.

"We worked tirelessly on learning field awareness and getting open shots," he said. "Our biggest asset was (catching teams in transition)."

Player Joe Die said more team structure made a difference, too.

"Working hard every day really helped us," he said. "In the end, we were a team, not just a bunch of guys out there running around."

Goldberg, who played club lacrosse at Florida State, has been more impressed with Dunwoody than any of the teams he's coached in four other places, including more established lacrosse regions of Washington, D.C. and Florida. He was impressed by how motivated players were during interim weeks with no coach.

"What they were doing without a coach was unbelievable," Goldberg said. "A bunch of 15-, 16- and 17-year-old guys organizing practices and themselves as a group was phenomenal. It was easy for me to fix the issues they were having.

"A lot of them had never benefitted from coaching before, and they really took the opportunity to learn and buy into what I was showing them."

Andrew Bryant, a team captain and one of the club's founding members, emerged Dunwoody's most valuable player. Will Scott was the leading scorer. Midfielder Alex Schlosser, voted defensive MVP, led the team in take-aways and ground balls. J.B. Watson won 70 percent of his face-offs, and Tom Reuning won the coach's award.

And though the DeKalb County School Board becomes isn't yet convinced to sanction lacrosse, players like J.B. Watson feel they're making an increasingly strong case.

"We played like a team and that's what made the difference," he said. "From where we came from last season and where we wound up at the end of this season, there was a big difference."

Dunwody's girls finished winless and went 0-2 in the postseason tournament, but feel they grew dramatically. The team was led by Maddy Keith, Ashley Pearson and Megan Alexander on offense and Ashley Weber and McKenna Osborne on defense.

"It was rough, especially for our first year, but we improved tremendously," coach Erin Evans said. "Lacrosse is one of the hardest sports to catch on to, but our girls did a good job. By the end of the season, their confidence level had gone up so much. They were a totally different team."