I, Victoria Hopkins, am a lacrosse player for five years now. And during that time I’ve met many people who I like, and dislike. Though the dislikes outweigh the likes. I’m convinced that there is a stereotype for female lacrosse players as well, and I’m not one of them. 

You’ll probably see long dirty blonde-haired girls with their hair pulled in a ponytail at the top of their head, or a bun, they’ll all be around 5’4 to 5’6 in height, average weight, and they just do some dang TikTok dances every water break and make their entire personality based on that. But I can’t complain because they would usually be the best middies. 

Speaking of middies, that’s where this one girl comes in. So within my second year of playing lacrosse, the previous fourth graders graduated onto the 5th and 6th-grade rec team. Most of them were pretty chill and became people I would consider friends but in comes the short, black-haired, evil-keenivle or whatever of middies.

That girl is named Tess. And I met Tess when I was in 6th grade and when she was in 5th, and before I start on our back story together let me just say that this girl is great at lacrosse. Easily one of the best middies I know, and I will give respect where it’s due. Anyway, this chick hates me for a couple of reasons.

So this was before I decided to just main defense for the rest of my time playing, I played as a midfielder for my first two years. That’s where I meet Tess. Now both of us don’t exactly fit that stereotype I mentioned earlier: We’re both not white (I’m Spanish, she’s Korean), and as far as I know, we don’t act like dumbasses. 

So for some not very important info, most of our practices at the start of the season take place in this indoor soccer stadium which was shared by many soccer players. And most of the time, no offense, soccer players are a bunch of arrogant airheads. I mean this one time this dummy kicked a soccer ball to the goal and it nearly hit me right in the face, which made my coach mad, but that’s not the point.

Anyway, at this point of the small story, I’m talking about we’re a few practices in. Things are getting pretty intense and competitive and I’ll be frank by saying that Tess is a very very good player and maybe has a year of experience more than me. I won’t deny that I have less skill than she does.

But, after this, I kinda got a little aggressive. And I want to formally apologize to her for my actions, though she’s still salty about it for sure.

So whenever we were both head-on, I started running, I forgot who had the ball. But, (nhgfhew I feel so bad now that I think about it ;-;) for some reason my smart, blue-collared, ass thought it was a great idea to headbutt this chick in the forehead. 

I would love to mention that, in women’s lacrosse we don’t usually wear helmets like they do in men’s. We wear goggles because we don’t do whatever the hell I did that day. But after that, poor Tess had a bruise and I felt like a major piece of crap, I apologized but to be fair after you have to work along with the same person that gave you a bruise on the forehead in lacrosse I sure as hell wouldn’t forgive me either. 

But Tess has beat me up a bit in future practices, so it’s fair game. But we still hate each other. 

But this isn’t the last time this happened. IN FACT, it was the very same season. 

About four years before I even lived in Franklin, we Brookfield lacrosse players were going up against the Franklin team which had enough girls to fill two entire fields. Which meant they had 22 people against our… 13. 

Now we were holding our ground pretty well, there are some people on that team who I would encounter later on in 8th grade when I join MKE Elite, but this is about that one person I wholeheartedly dislike. 

Rosie.

Now Rosie is like Tess, but just a major transphobic, b*tchy, and basic asshole. 

So here we are, hauling ass around all of these players with little to no breaks because for some reason everyone wanted to skip out! But to be fair, up until this point I had never been on an outside turf field and it’s pretty nice.

This girl was lowkey causing me some trouble on middie. The Franklin parents were yelling like maniacs, telling their kids to beat us up and ignore fouls- like what!? I’m sorry I didn’t know we were supposed to be battling to the death, god forbid that we win. 

I would love to take the time to mention that I don’t like taking crap from anyone. Friend’s talking trash to you is fine because they’re your friends. But if some random blonde chick just started messing with you in a sport where you’re allowed to be physically aggressive under certain circumstances. Bet your butt I’m about to get serious.

Anyway, after this chick keeps yelling in my face I get sick of it. And by some miracle, I pull a major headbutt which shocks her. Everyone is staring at us now in shock like I had just committed some terrible sin as if they weren’t encouraging their kids to do the very same. 

The best part? I. GOT. AWAY. WITH. IT. 

The ref didn’t even care! She must have been getting sick at all of the parents yelling at her for bad calls, or just the players doing illegal crap, to begin with. And even after that, little Rosie Cheeks ends up getting a yellow card on me and is sat out for the rest of the game in the shame-hole that is the penalty box. My best friend.

Anyway, that game ended with a tie (7-7). A less than desirable score but we held our ground well. But my parents congratulated me and then I became known as the girl who will eventually snap if messed around with after a while.

On the bright side, because of the pandemic, I got a chance to play with most of the same girls plus a ton of other people from around the area (because they didn’t have enough for lacrosse teams?) during my final year with the Brookfield Rec team, and guess who we got to play first?

Franklin. 

They barely had a third of all the girls they had two years prior. And oddly enough, Tess had convinced someone who used to play with Franklin to play for Brookfield. I mean, I knew her from MKE Elite of course, and she was extremely good. For the most part, we and a few other girls carried our team hard. 

But anyway, we play on the high school’s field and we beat them 10-5 on their own turf in front of all of their parents with all of our… 30-something girls. That was a fun year, we didn’t win all of our games but I had a pretty good time.

But boy what a hypocrite I am because now I live in Franklin. Whoops.

And this helped shape me into the violent defensive player I am today. I mean, because of bad grades I haven’t exactly played in a year but hell I’m ready to get back on the road and practice, so you can expect to see me on the lacrosse team this year, whether it’s JV or Varsity just know I will probably injure someone accidentally, like that time I accidentally dislocated a poor girl’s thumb.