Last Thursday, the girls’ lacrosse team at Baltimore Bryn Mawr (Md.) was scheduled to take to the field in a preseason friendly with Catonsville Mount de Sales (Md.), the first of two scrimmages the Mawrtians would be scheduled before the 2026 season.
The location of the friendly tells you all you need to know. The start of the season took place at a field named for a teacher at the school Rosabelle Sinclair. As the story goes, Sinclair witnessed a pro box lacrosse game in a large North American city. Inspired, she wrote down a set of rules as she understood them then implemented them with her students.
A century later, the field named for her saw the start of the 100th season of girls’ scholastic lacrosse at the school. And the 100th season of girls’ scholastic lacrosse in America.
No film exists of the first time Bryn Mawr took the field against an opponent. But we do know that the rules Sinclair wrote down influenced the game for much of the last century. Back in the beginning, players were required to adhere to certain defined roles within the game using position names borrowed from cricket — third man, cover point, and the like.
It would take around 50 years for rulesmakers to turn the goalie crease from a square to a circle. Later on, the arc and fan were introduced to prevent defenders from barricading the goal.
In the 1990s, team tactics evolved. In the “cricket” era of the game, the 11 field players were assigned a laundry list of duties assigned to their positions. But coaches evolved to more of a “soccer/field hockey” era. where four forwards, four defenders, and three midfielders each had more or less identical duties, save for teams using a draw control specialist.
Restraining lines began in the mid-to-late 1990s, with a full hard boundary in 2006. The possession came into being in the college game in the mid-2010s, and unlimited motion began in the early 2020s.
While the evolution of the game has been dizzying the last 30 years in girls’ and women’s lacrosse, it was Sinclair’s rules which pretty much were the rules of lacrosse on the distaff side for, more or less, 70 years.
The 100th season for Sinclair’s team will actually begin with a home match against the team that defined lacrosse excellence for much of the last quarter-century, Owings Mills McDonogh (Md.). The Mawrtians will take a trip to the deep South to play Springfield Effingham County (Ga.) and Mount Pleasant Ocean Collegiate Academy (S.C.), then will take on Baltimore Roland Park (Md.) on March 25th in the latest iteration of the Northern Parkway Derby.
The main celebration for Bryn Mawr’s 100th season of lacrosse, however, is going to be a non-conference match against Philadelphia Penn Charter (Pa.) on April 11, where there will be a curated exhibit from the school archives detailing the school’s role in the development of girls’ and women’s lacrosse.
It should be a grand occasion on more than one account: the game is a fundraiser for curing Friederiech’s Ataxia, a musculoskeletal disease that typically shows up between the ages of five and 15, and is considered a terminal disease.
Tonight, a fundraiser is scheduled for the school’s student center. I hope each of you will read this PDF and do what you can.