During tryouts last summer, not one of the four local girls on the U.S. national Under-19 lacrosse team figured she had a chance to make the team.
Roland Park's Francesca Whitehurst, McDonogh's Brindi Griffin and Andie Aldave and Maryvale's Miranda Ibello think back to that first day of tryouts with 150 girls at Stevenson University and shake their heads.
"Tryouts were insanely rigorous and intense to say the least," Ibello said.
Whitehurst said, and the others agreed, that they had never been in such a difficult position on the lacrosse field.
"You go to tryouts for teams in our area and you can kind of tell [who might make it]," Whitehurst said. "But at this, everyone was so good. That's what made it so hard. You had to be on top of your game 24/7. It was mentally and physically so exhausting."
It was also rewarding when they made the final 18-player roster after a training weekend in Naples, Fla., in January, and realized that they would represent their country as the United States goes for a fifth straight title at the Federation of International Lacrosse Women's U19 World Championship, July 23 through Aug. 1 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
"We're all so honored to wear red, white and blue," Aldave said. "Not a lot of girls get the opportunity do this, and that's something that I've always kept in the back of my mind, that all the sacrifices we've all made — I know all four of us have had to give up plans on the weekend or a trip to the beach or something because we have these training weekends — are really going to be worth it, getting to Scotland and having a chance to win a gold medal."
United States coach Kim Simons Tortolani, the co-coach at Bryn Mawr who also led Georgetown to three NCAA final four berths, said she, too, wasn't sure early in the tryouts that all four would make the final cut. But that changed through a series of training weekends over the past year.
"They all really continued to develop and were able to play within the system that we were trying to put in," Tortolani said. "They're all very different personalities and they're very different players, but every one of them was able to continue to improve and to handle what we asked them to do both individually and in a team setting."
Tortolani said that development almost certainly came from their experience playing in the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference, considered one of the best high school conferences in the country.
"Some of the girls we thought were our strongest players early on, after the season, struggled a little bit, maybe because they played against competition that wasn't as strong throughout the spring," she said. "The Baltimore and Long Island girls play at such a high level and have such tough competition all season long with their high school teams, that they made a lot of strides. That's one thing they all four had in common. They were just used to competing in really tough situations."
The four girls had never played together on the same team. Whitehurst and Ibello have graduated from high school and are headed to Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, respectively. Griffin and Aldave will return to A Conference champion McDonogh where Griffin, who has committed to Maryland, will be a senior and Aldave, committed to Notre Dame, will be a junior.
While they all played leadership roles on their high school teams — all were All-Metro players — they blend well with their U19 teammates. Tortolani said all 18 players are unselfish, but some will have to be a bit more "selfish," and she's eager to see which ones emerge as leaders once they get on the field in Scotland.
Griffin, the sister of Maryland All-America attacker Brooke Griffin, played attack for McDonogh and her role on the U19 team mirrors that role. Ibello will join her on attack after playing midfield at Maryvale, although she led the Lions in scoring. Whitehurst, The Baltimore Sun's All-Metro Player of the Year, played midfield as did Aldave, although she focused more on defense.
Even for Ibello and Aldave, their positions aren't so different from what they're used to, they're just more precise.
The U.S. team will run two midfield lines, rotating every five minutes — an adjustment for Whitehurst, who played almost every minute of the season for the Reds.
"It is different, but when you're out there it doesn't feel different, because the pace of the game is so much faster than for a high school team," said Whitehurst. "In those five minutes, you're doing way more than you would think."
Said Ibello: "Everything should be 100 percent all the time."
Aldave, the youngest player on the U19 team, wasn't initially invited to try out. She made it into the selection process only because another player could not try out. Thinking she was too young, she almost skipped the tryout but her father convinced her to go.
"My dad said, 'Give it shot. You never know,' so I went to the tryout," Aldave said. "And it's so intimidating because you have seniors who are going to top-10 schools and I only saw a few girls in my grade, maybe two or three. ... It was pretty crazy when I made the training roster. I wasn't even supposed to be there."
While the United States likely faces its toughest competition from 2011 silver medalist Australia and bronze medalist Canada, there will be a familiar face on another opposing team as Whitehurst's Roland Park teammate Jenna Baverman competes for first-time entrant Israel. The U.S. team, which opens competition against Canada on July 23, will meet Israel on July 26.
Of the four U.S. players, only Ibello has traveled internationally, so that added to the nerves as they prepared to depart for Edinburgh on Sunday after a training weekend at Stevenson.
"There's definitely pressure," said Griffin about playing for a U.S. team that has lost just one U19 championship — to Australia in the inaugural event in 1995 — and hasn't lost a game since.
"But it just pushes us to train harder and work harder. We're playing with the best of the best, with girls who are so good and push everyone to get better, and we have great coaches, so we're learning from them. We know we can do it. If we go over there and work hard, we can win."
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