The move to Phase 4 Return to Play guidelines at the start of the month has been welcome news for everyone in the lacrosse community, and none more so than our national squad programmes.
The decimation of international events over the last year has left our national teams short on practice and short on opportunity, but the recent Return to Play has meant squads can now get back on the field and look forward to the future.
And England Women’s World Championship training squad member, Emma Oakley, spoke of her and the group’s excitement after their first squad weekend following the hiatus stretching back to last year.
She said: “It’s been great, everybody is just so buzzed! It’s been three months since we last played, we’ve built up the excitement over the last few weeks and it’s been so nice to just release it on the pitch.
“We’ve done quite a lot of skill drills, just shaking off a bit of the rust and then into a lot of game play just to get ourselves back into it.”
The April training weekend was a joint affair, with the World Championship training squad working side by side with the Under 23s, seeing over 50 players back on the pitch across the weekend.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, any previous squad weekend permitted under Return to Play guidelines had still been subject to a 30 participant limit and so had restricted the squad’s ability to practice against other teams, or even get the full World Championship training squad together in the same place.
Oakley said: “It’s always great to play with the whole England setup, it helps to build us, it builds the Under 23s and we were able to play a great practice match yesterday.
“We haven’t played for such a long time, it’s great to just remember what lacrosse actually is and how much we enjoy it.”
The defender admits that it’s been a difficult few months, but praised the relentless motivation of the staff and her fellow team mates for helping everyone get through the lockdown period.
“It’s been tough, we would much rather have been out playing but I think the coaches and the players have done a great job in working on what we can do.
“We’ve had our programmes, all our strength work, speed work, conditioning work going on but we’ve also had a number of virtual squads, so we’ve tried to get together as much as we can even though it doesn’t quite replace being on the pitch.”
Another consequence of the global situation has been the wholesale rescheduling of the international lacrosse calendar which has seen the Women’s World Championship pushed back 12 months from its original slot of this July.
However, Oakley is looking to turn the delayed Championship into a positive, using the extra lead in time to continue to develop her game and make sure preparations are perfect for 2022.
“Now having 15 months to go, we’ve got 15 months of focus, and we’ve got that extra bit of time just to make sure we’re on our game, know what we’re doing and we’re now just incredibly excited for the next year ahead!’