Churchill Girls Lacrosse Team Hopes to Compete for State Championship

Churchill girls’ lacrosse coach Christen Gjeldum looked around at her team following last year’s loss to C. Milton Wright in the 4A-3A state semifinals.

After having cruised through the regular season and playoffs to that point, the Bulldogs’ season, which had produced the first regional championship in school history, had come to a disappointing and abrupt end, as they fell to the Mustangs, 22-2.

Yet instead of dwelling on the frustrating way the season had ended, Gjeldum praised her players for what they had done to get to that point and told them that she hoped they would actually be able to use the game as a learning experience going forward.

“I just said, ‘not many teams get the opportunity to play in the state semifinals, but now you know what it takes [to win a game like this],’” Gjeldum said. “And now that they know what it takes, they know that they just have to work that much harder to be able to hang with a team [like C. Milton Wright].”

And now, nearly midway through this season, Gjeldum has seen her team putting in that necessary hard work, and the results have been obvious.

Churchill has won its first six games to start the season while outscoring its opponents by a dominant margin of 97-51. Three of the Bulldogs’ six wins have come by margins of 10 goals or more, including Monday’s 18-8 win against Northwest.

“I think we’re playing even better than last year’s team,” said Churchill junior Mairin Hall. “We won the regional title last year. But this year, I just feel like we have the ability to win every game.”

Senior Katie Ruben leads the Bulldogs in goals (37) while Hall, who scored 55 goals last season, has tallied 30. Junior Madelyn Flax has added 22 more.

But while Churchill’s offense has proven to be more than capable of putting the ball in the goal, averaging more than 16 goals per game, the defense, led by senior Sami Soma, has also put the clamps on opposing offenses. The Bulldogs’ defense has limited opposing teams to just eight goals per game.

“We’re definitely able to score, and have a really strong offense,” Hall said. “But we’ve really grown as a defense too.”

And with that balance and the hard work that she has seen her team put in, Gjeldum said she is optimistic that Churchill is ready to take the next step as a team and possibly compete for the first state championship in school history.

Gjeldum, in her third year as Churchill’s head coach, has guided the Bulldogs to a 33-4 record during her tenure as well as to a division title in 2009 and the regional championship last season. Churchill won its first 14 games in 2009, going undefeated through the regular season, before losing to Walter Johnson in the Class 4A-3A West final.

“They realize if they keep working hard that we can try to accomplish that goal [of winning a state championship] because that’s the next step for us,” Gjeldum said. “This team is capable of anything as long as they continue to work hard.”

Hall agreed, although she did say that the Bulldogs aren’t looking too far ahead and are instead just taking the season one game at a time. 

“I definitely feel like we’re capable of going undefeated, winning the region, going onto states and maybe even winning states,” Hall said. “But we really haven’t even talked about the state championship that much. That’s something we would love to accomplish, but we’re not looking that far ahead. We’re just taking it one game at a time and just focusing on what we have to do to win the next game.”