Yesterday, Natalie Wills, assistant girls’ lacrosse coach at Owings Mills McDonogh (Md.) lost her valiant fight with metastatic breast cancer.
Wills was a student-athlete at Annapolis St. Mary’s (Md.) before becoming a goaltender at Vanderbilt University. She became a collegiate assistant with a couple of programs before lending her considerable knowledge to one of the finest girls’ lacrosse programs of the last quarter-century.
But one of the things that Wills has given to the game of lacrosse is off the field. She created and launched the USA Lacrosse’s National Team Development Program, which has been responsible for keeping the United States a pre-eminent world powerhouse in the sport.
It was about four years ago when Wills was first diagnosed. She went through surgery and began treatments, which proved effective. But she had a particularly aggressive form of cancer, spreading throughout her body.
During the 2026 season, one in which McDonogh marched all the way to the IAAM Class “A” final, the team was not only battling some of the finest competition in the United States, but the team knew its assistant varsity coach was in the fight of her life.
Last September, a number of coaches ran a clinic called “Light The Fight,” which was set to raise money for cancer treatment and research.
It turns out that the GoFundMe page for that event is still running. The total is now over $75,000. Can we perhaps give it a push towards its further goal?