Claire Mancini can best appreciate where the Foxcroft girls' lacrosse team is now because she endured firsthand where it was. The senior attack spent her first two seasons with the Foxes having never won an Independent School League A Conference game.
"It was one of those things," said Foxcroft Coach Matt MacDonald, "where when another team saw Foxcroft on their schedule they circled in a 'W.' "
"How she goes, we go," Coach Matt MacDonald said of Claire Mancini, left. "I don't think it's a secret anymore."
(Jonathan Ernst For The Washington Post)
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So it only seems fitting that Mancini is at the forefront of the program's turnaround. Mancini has scored a team-high 15 goals through Foxcroft's first four games to help the Foxes to a 3-1 start. She has two five-goal games this season in victories over St. Andrew's and Flint Hill.
Mancini, who will play at the University of Massachusetts next year, will be the first girls' lacrosse player in Foxcroft's history to play for a Division I school and has helped give an identity to a team that had spent so long searching for one.
"How she goes, we go," MacDonald said. "When she starts off a game on fire we're usually in pretty good shape. I don't think it's a secret anymore."
The Hillsborough, Calif., native long ago set her sights on playing at a Division I program. When she chose a boarding school that had no real lacrosse tradition, it appeared to have put a dent in those hopes. But when MacDonald -- a former Division III lacrosse player who coached three boys' state title teams in Georgia in the 1990s -- took over, everything changed.
Foxcroft, which perennially finished at the bottom of the conference, broke through last season with a 6-6 record in MacDonald's first year. Mancini thrived under the new coach, scoring a team-high 38 goals. She carried her play into the summer, where she had impressive showings at elite lacrosse camps, and began to garner interest from several Division I schools.
"I knew that coming from a school that isn't known for its lacrosse, I was in the bottom half of girls trying to play lacrosse in college," Mancini said. "It's almost like Coach MacDonald came at exactly the right time."
Mancini is one of six starting seniors, and MacDonald believes the Foxes have right mix of talent and leadership to advance deep into the conference playoffs.
"It's going to be a big loss when we lose this group of seniors," MacDonald said. "The one thing that's motivating them is they know this is it. They want to make amends for the two or three years where they've been beaten up. They want to change things around here a little."
