By Donald Heath

Special for the Effingham Herald

SPRINGFIELD – High school spring sports are preparing to spring into action very soon.

In accordance with Georgia High School Association rules, team practices for baseball, soccer, track and field, lacrosse, tennis and golf can begin on Monday (Jan. 27) with games starting as early as Feb. 10.

Many athletes are thinking ahead and, with the urging of their coaches, have been lifting weights and running just to get ready for Day 1.

“We can’t work out with equipment, but smaller programs like us, we’re still building (to find athletes),” said Effingham County girls lacrosse coach Alison Lawson, watching a few of her girls running at Rebel Field on Friday. “(Voluntary workouts) give the returners a chance to meet the new players and the opportunity to set the bar for the expectations we want to see during the season.”

Lawson said tryouts will be held during the first days of team practice. She said seven girls graduated from the 2024 team, but seven new girls have made commitments to come out, keeping the program with the same number of athletes as the previous year.

She said ideally, she’d like to have 25 players and have a junior varsity team.

Effingham County, like a lot of teams in the area, draws lacrosse players from other sports. The Rebels’ program begins its sixth year – the first being the abbreviated 2020 season postponed because of COVID.

But the program’s roots have begun to take hold. Athletes new to the sport are taking it seriously and ECHS has improved from three wins in 2021 to six in 2022 to nine in 2023 and a school-record 11 last season.

The Rebels even gave Midtown, an Atlanta school, a competitive match before falling 17-13 in the first round of the state playoffs.

Lawson said encouraging athletes from other sports to try lacrosse has been a key to success. Standout softball players Olivia Morgan and Megan Coleman were productive lacrosse goal scorers a year ago.

“For the softball players, it’s really amazing how their skills from softball translate to lacrosse,” Lawson said. “Knowing athletes are actively playing sports in the fall and they’ll probably put their sticks down for a few months before picking them up again doesn’t stress me out. … The hand-eye coordination of softball really translates well to lacrosse.”

Lawson finds favorable comparisons with other sports as well. She said the field setup for soccer and lacrosse are similar and offensive and defensive strategies from basketball have a kinship with lacrosse.

“We can really pull athletes from almost any sport,” Lawson said.

But are they ready to prepare themselves in January for the spring? Cold weather is in the forecast for the upcoming week.

Growing up, Lawson played lacrosse in often frigid upstate New York. She laughed when telling a story about shoveling snow off the practice field.

“I’m not afraid of the cold, but I can’t say the girls love it,” she said.