Poly Girls Lacrosse Team Points to Tenth Straight City Championship

Josh Headley hopes his team makes it 10 in a row.

The head coach of the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute girls varsity lacrosse team has seen his team win the last nine city championships. A tenth would mean Headley would go out on top, since this is his last season coaching the Cold Spring Lane team.

Admittedly, Headley says the league schedule is a very limited pool of competition in the city. Six schools—City, Digital, Patterson, Poly and Western, along with new National Academy Foundation—will play each other twice.  However, typically, the team that advances to the state playoffs does not have much success.

“When we get to regional play, we will always get a pick like Towson or Eastern Tech,” Headley said during a mid-March interview. “These other teams say, ‘Hey, this is great practice for us.’ And we have a good practice out of it and then we go home.”

Yet Headley realizes Poly is not a lacrosse school.

“These are academic kids that want an athletic outlet, so we provide it,” he said.

“At this school, we don’t graduate athletes who happen to be scholars, we graduate scholars who happen to be athletes. That always has been the focus here and always will continue to be.”

In fact, one of the challenges Headley has to deal with—and it is one he is extremely willing to live with—is that some of the girls miss occasional practices for extracurricular academic activities.

“If I have kids that are doing research at the Hopkins lab, it’s OK for me if they miss a practice a week,” Headley said. “If they’re doing work on cornea research and repair using stem cells, I’m OK with that,” he deadpanned.

The coach indicated that one or two players every year will miss a practice or two a week due to this type of work.

Yet the team has always found a way to be successful on the field.

This year, Headley is looking to Selena Guerrero-Martin to be a leader. The senior will be at center midfield, where she will take most of the team’s draws.

“[She has] pretty good strength on the midfield, and also at attack,” Headley said. “She’s a great athlete all around.”

And she also happens to be Maryland’s girl selection for the Wendy’s High School Heisman, an award given to one boy and one girl in each of the 50 states.  The award is a way to honor high school athletes who meet certain academic and athletic criteria, and results in scholarships for the honorees.

While Guerrero-Martin will lead the midfield, Headley said Sukaina Miftah will anchor the attack.

“She’s got a good read of the field,” he said, adding the senior has played on the varsity team all four of her years at Poly.

“[Both of] the kids know how to handle the stick, they know when to pass it off, and they do a good job of utilizing everyone’s strengths on the field,” Headley said.

Sophomore Zoe Krulak-Palmer will contribute at midfield and attack.

While there are several players ready to compete on the offensive side of the field, defense is an area where the team has always been weakest.

“A lot of our girls come from Roland Park Middle—they’ve always played on the co-ed boys team—so they play a very aggressive style of defense,” Headley said.  “And that usually tends to get us foul calls.”

Emma Dobry, another sophomore, is one of the defenders upon whom Headley will rely. “Emma has played since she was probably 6 or 7,” he said, noting that she, along with Krulak-Palmer, adapt well to field conditions and personnel changes.

Zoe Spiliadis, yet another sophomore, will be in goal for the Lady Engineers.

“Her mom’s a goalie, her dad’s a goalie, so I’m hoping that the genetics are there,” Headley said. “She’s a workhorse. She’s willing to put herself through a grueling workout if it betters the team.”

Another key to the team’s success is the coach’s philosophy of finding playing time for each of the 28 girls on the team.

“They may not play a lot every game, but everyone is going to play,” he said. “I really feel the reason why we succeed is that everyone plays.”

He also realizes that the sport is a relief valve for the girls.

“These are smart kids who can play a game, have fun, and still manage to impress people with their game skills. Book smarts, game smarts. It is therapy for them.”

Meanwhile, after this season, Headley will find his own therapy in coaching his two elementary-school aged children in rec league sports.

A growing leadership role at Poly, including head of the history department, is a signal for the coach to step aside.

“It’s been a great time,” he said. “Now it is to the point where someone else needs to take this up.”

And, if Headley’s wish for a tenth championship comes true, maybe that someone will lead the Lady Engineers to an 11th city championship in 2012.