(Josh Watt/CHSAANow.com)
COLORADO SPRINGS — The Air Academy Kadets won their three girls lacrosse state titles in a span of three years. They hadn’t missed the Final 4 since 2010.
So when the Kadets were eliminated in the second round of the state playoffs last year, it was a shell shock to those on the team who had reached the pinnacle of the game only a year earlier.
“I think it was a wake-up call for all the girls last year,” junior Kennedy Jamieson said. “We had kind of a rough season. For the girls who had been here the year before, it was really a wake-up call, because we knew we had to work more as a team. We would get frustrated very easily.”
So this season, when first-year coach Jason Wallace took the program over, he wanted to change the culture and get it closer to what it was in 2014.
The first step in that process was to simplify things. He now preaches to his team that things need to be done in short order for them to achieve long-term success.
One play. One goal. One team.
That’s how this year’s Air Academy team operates.
“It took a few weeks for the kids to adapt to it,” Wallace said. “They were shell-shocked the first few days, but after that, they started to buy into the philosophy here and the dedication comes with it.”
And the results have come with that. The Kadets have jumped out to a 3-1 record, with their early loss coming to Denver East who is currently ranked No. 4 in the CHSAANow.com girls lacrosse rankings. The Kadets battled all game, but it was the Angels coming away with a 7-6 win.
Nevertheless, this team, currently ranked eighth, feels much more comfortable than the team that took the field last season.
“We’ve really worked hard on team bonding,” Jamieson said. “Our chemistry on the field is so much better now because we’re such a tight family. We understand each other on the field and we’re not so much worried about our stats anymore. We just want the win for the team.”
That’s a situation that can be easier said than done sometimes. But in his first year, Wallace came into the season knowing that his players would have the ability to compete with the top programs in the state. The school had shown that capability not long ago.
So if there was any pressure on him coming in and restoring the level of play to a state championship level, he wouldn’t let it show. If anything, he simply changed what kind of emotion was being utilized to accomplish his goals.
“I didn’t have any pressure, I had expectations,” he said. “I had the drive and the want to get that team back.”
(Josh Watt/CHSAANow.com)
After a 19-1 win over Pueblo West on Friday, it appears that he is well on his way in doing that. And the scary part is that his team is outscoring its opponents 69-11 with only one senior, goalkeeper Isabel Marbaker, on the roster.
He’s hoping that Marbaker and the handful of juniors he has on the roster can teach the younger players that there aren’t always going to be blowout victories and success needs to appreciated. But a big part of doing that is getting back to the team’s motto for this season.
One play. One goal. One team.
“That’s all it comes down to, keep it simple,” Wallace said. “We as a team, 20 players, come together with that same thought process, when we walk on the field and everyone’s like that, nothing is going to stop us.”