Amanda O’Leary was simply driving home from work in the summer of 2008 when she saw something she had never seen before: girls playing lacrosse in Gainesville.
While she had been hired to start the Florida women’s lacrosse program, the Gators were still two years away from playing their first game, and O’Leary was unaware the sport had a youth presence locally.
By chance, she had stumbled upon a summer practice put on by Buchholz coaches Ian and Lynn Millinoff.
“I had never seen that in this area,” O’Leary said. “Of course I got really excited, made a U-turn, parked in the parking lot, came over and introduced myself.”
The couple was just in its second year of coaching lacrosse and was still learning on the fly. They were more than happy to oblige when O’Leary asked if she could help out and give the kids some pointers.
“She taught the girls for about a half an hour and it was fantastic,” Ian said. “They learned more in that half hour than it took us two years to teach them.”
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While lacrosse is spreading to most high schools in the area, no program has made a deep run in the state playoffs.
And aside from the fledgling program at the private Oak Hall School, none are grooming a potential Division I prospect like O’Leary’s daughter Madison.
But the girls’ program at Oak Hall might not exist yet if it were not for the O’Learys.
Madison played in a middle school league started by the Millinoffs, but she wanted to continue playing lacrosse in high school. With limited options in the area, she and her mom approached the Oak Hall administration about forming a program, and the school supported the idea.
Local coaches agree O’Leary’s daughter will be the first Gainesville-area player to make it big at the next level, but UF has yet to recruit any player from the area and has just three in-state players on its roster.
While top-five teams like Syracuse and Maryland benefit from the wealth of talent in their state, only 12 percent of the Gators’ roster is from Florida. Sixty-one percent of the No. 2 Orange’s roster is comprised of players from New York while 62 percent of No. 4 Terrapins’ roster is from in state.
“The University of Florida is the flagship university in the state,” O’Leary said. “I think if you can build a roster with Florida players I think that would be something we would look to do. I would be all for it.”
The biggest reason for the disparity of in-state talent between Florida and the northern schools is the amount of opportunities to play high school and club lacrosse.
Florida has two high-level club programs, while Maryland has more than 20. At the high school level, Florida has 113 programs, or one per 18,062 girls under the age of 18. Maryland has 196 programs, or one per 3,488 girls under 18.
“It would be a huge help,” O’Leary said of the possibility of being able to recruit the area. “Those opportunities are going to afford themselves to these young women sooner rather than later.”
Eastside High boys’ coach Chuck Rogan and girls’ coach Amber Tomassi said for talent in the area to improve a “feeder system” — a club program that has the ability to travel around the country to play top-level competition — needs to be established.
Rogan said players have not been able to improve enough to be recruited by Division I programs such as Florida due to the lack of quality competition.
“It’s absolutely exploding and going viral,” Rogan said of lacrosse in Gainesville. “The other side of the coin is, there is a ceiling without feeder programs.”
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Paul McCord has already installed the blueprint for how Gainesville lacrosse can raise its ceiling.
An assistant women’s coach at Jacksonville University and father of Florida freshman attacker Taylor McCord, Paul started growing the sport at the middle and high school levels in the area with the help of his wife Mindy, JU’s head coach.
When interest grew enough at the middle school level, the McCords started Lax Maniax, a girls’ club lacrosse program with teams for middle- and high-school age girls.
“What that did was it provided them with tremendous experience playing against the Long Island teams, the Maryland teams,” Paul said.
He added that Lax Maniax has taken more than 50 trips to New York and Maryland with at least 1,000 kids from Florida.
Taylor played at Bartram Trail High in Jacksonville, a program that was also started by her parents. Several of her teammates also played with her on Lax Maniax. She said that Bartram Trail saw a marked improvement in its performance once the players got significant experience at the club level.
“If you’re not interested in playing in college, then just play high school,” Taylor said. “But if you are interested in playing in college you definitely have to play on a club team.”
While the addition of a club program would help, O’Leary thinks the high schools are close to producing players she can recruit.
“I’ve seen just in the course of watching Madison play in that league the improvement has been tremendous,” O’Leary said. “I don’t think we’re real far away.”
Lacrosse coach Amanda O’Leary walks off the field with junior Haydon Judge during halftime of a game against Dartmouth on March 20. O’Leary and the Gators beat Stony Brook 16-9 on Wednesday afternoon.
