DCL players Remy Hills, Ruth Braddick, Tess Cottrell, Flossie Enriquez, Blake Sherman, Wini Nepveux and Adelaide Hoffman with coach Jenn Kinney. Photography by Pete Hoffman.
Pete Hoffman and Varina Lin couldn’t wait until their daughters were old enough to start playing lacrosse.
Hoffman, originally from upstate New York, had grown up playing the sport and continued as an undergraduate at TCU on the club team. Lin played on the Division I women’s team at George Washington University.
Both parents of Mockingbird Elementary students targeted 2022 as the year they would start a lacrosse team for their daughters and other young girls in Dallas.
But the COVID-19 pandemic altered their plans.
Hoffman and Lin’s families lived nearby. Around October, they were going stir crazy.
“So we went over to Mockingbird Elementary, and we trained our girls, and we had a really great experience,” Hoffman says.
While Hoffman had coached kids in sports before, he relied on Lin for her experience as a former player.
“Men’s and women’s — completely different rules. Completely,” Lin says. “I mean it is two different types of sports.”
The next week, a daughter of one of Hoffman’s acquaintances came to play. They kept training the girls for a few weeks, and then the parents started talking about getting the team started.
It was earlier than Hoffman expected but still possible. In just over a week, he built a website, made social media accounts and reached out to more contacts to invite more girls to play.
They held a clinic at Glencoe Park for girls in kindergarten through second grade who were interested in lacrosse. Of the 32 who signed up, 24 decided to join the two teams: one for kindergarteners and one for first and second graders.
Neighbor Kristy Mathot, who played lacrosse in high school, saw a social media post about the clinic and knew she wanted to get her daughter, then in second grade, involved right away.
“I was so passionate about the sport myself, and I wanted her to find something that she could be passionate about,” Mathot says. “She hadn’t really found her sport yet.”
Now, just three years after Dallas City Lacrosse began, the program has grown to include more than 100 girls in kindergarten through fourth grade who are zoned to Dallas ISD schools or those in the Lake Highlands High School feeder pattern. Next year, they’ll have a team for fifth graders.
Alex Fergus, whose daughter was one of the first 24 to join the organization, says the team gave the girls something safe to do outside during the pandemic, and it has helped them grow their confidence.
Plus, it’s provided young girls an opportunity to participate in a sport not offered by their schools.
“We’ve got over 100 girls who never would have picked up a stick,” Fergus says.
There are about 15 adults on staff of the nonprofit organization, and most of them are women.
“I’ve had several moms who have said, ‘You know, we just really love the fact that there are strong female coaches and leaders and role models, because so many other sports are led by dads,’” says Mathot, who’s also a coach. “And no discredit to that, but it’s just a really unique community, a unique league.”
Doğan Dattilo, one of a few male coaches, has two daughters playing for Dallas City Lacrosse. He says he tries to stay off the field as much as possible so the players are led by women.
Dallas City Lacrosse plays teams from the suburbs and nearby private schools, such as Hockaday and Episcopal School of Dallas. But with so many teams, it was hard to schedule games for each one.
The solution was what they call “play days.” Held at Woodrow Wilson High School, the play days brought other teams to our neighborhood to compete, with games scheduled one after another.
“It’s just amazing to watch these girls play, the first year playing, never having picked up a stick, never having heard of lacrosse,” Lin says. “And then all of a sudden, they love the sport. They want to play. At practice, they’re always asking for more time.”
