Horizon girls lacrosse falls in regionals but celebrates a season of growth

Izzy Scarpulla, Horizon High girls lacrosse team’s senior captain, remembers entering the team’s district championship game against Lake Nona High Thursday, April 16, with their “heads high and sticks up.” 

The Lady Hawks had won districts the year before over Lake Nona. The experience gave the team the extra boost of confidence they needed. Scarpulla said they knew they could do it, so they did. Horizon clinched back-to-back district championships with the 20-9 win. 

“We started cheering with our new goalie this year,” she said. “She wasn’t there last year to experience the fun of winning districts, but it was her first year this year. We came back and our athletic director had the trophy, and we just started jumping with it. … It was awesome.” 

But the Class 2A Regional Quarterfinal game against Hagerty High Saturday, April 25, didn’t bring the same joy as districts. 

For the second consecutive year, Horizon fell to the Huskies. 

Although there were no cheers this time, the Lady Hawks still walked off the field with their heads held high. 

“The only thing we asked of the girls was to leave everything on the field, play your hearts out and leave it on the field,” head coach Victoria Moore said. “They did exactly that, so there’s nothing to be upset about. … Every game we asked them to not leave anything on the field, and every time, they answered.” 

Moore emphasized to the players how proud she was of them. The team lost 20-2 to Hagerty last year, but this swing around it was 17-4. The improvement was all she could ask for as a coach, especially one who had her first go around as a lacrosse coach. 

GROWING JOURNEY

Moore took over the girls lacrosse program at the beginning of the season. She previously was working as Horizon’s girls soccer head coach and when she heard the lacrosse team was looking for a new leader so it could have a season, she decided to give it a try. 

“Let’s bring on a challenge,” Moore said of her decision.

But she can’t take the credit for the Lady Hawks’ 12-4 record and regional quarterfinal appearance. The credit goes to the trio of coaches who worked together as one unit. Moore said her and assistant coach Keren Dwyer both were in their first year of coaching lacrosse, but assistant coach Jessica Wubker knew the game. 

Wubker taught the coaches and players all of the lacrosse-specific knowledge from breaking down how to properly hold a stick to figuring out the flow of the game. 

In soccer, every time a foul is called, the game stops. With lacrosse, it’s different. Moore said refs can blow the whistle, but the play continues, and determining the flow of the game was her biggest challenge. 

But the coaching style already had developed from her career in soccer. 

It wasn’t only the coaching staff who was learning the game. Newer players also were learning how to pilot while building the plane. 

“Seeing how girls at the beginning of the season, who had never touched a stick in their life, were able to put on the field toward the end of the season and have confidence in what they were doing (is rewarding),” Moore said. 

The makeup of Horizon’s team was half returners, who had seen last year’s success, with half new players. At the beginning of the season, the team ran many simple drills such as learning how to collect ground balls, catch and pass. Through time, the growth became evident. 

Moore specifically remembers seeing the team click and “put everything in motion” when it shut out Edgewater 12-0 Friday, Feb. 20. She saw a cohesive team, they weren’t playing individually, they were reading each other’s minds and knew everyone’s place. 

From there, they honed in on the plays and expanded their knowledge outside of the basics. 

What helped was having experienced players such as Scarpulla. 

“She’s definitely extremely important to the team,” Moore said. “She commands the field when she’s on it. She leads with confidence. She has good sportsmanship. She’s a player that any coach would want on their team so losing her strength and confidence next year will be hard.” 

Scarpulla began playing lacrosse in seventh grade. Growing up as a military daughter, she traveled all over the country, living in seven states and attending 10 schools. But traveling is what shaped who she has become today. 

In New York, lacrosse is very popular, she said, and that is where she first started playing. They put her as an attacker but moved her to midfielder, which is what stuck. Last year she came to Horizon, and after seeing the girls who had played club lacrosse together for years, she knew it would be a great fit. 

This season, she received a referee’s nomination and memorabilia pin for the Sportsmanship Award, which is given to players who exemplify high character and integrity. It meant a lot to her and she gave all the credit to her upbringing. Her whole life was surrounded by the military, following her dad who served 40 years. 

“My junior year receiving the role of captain was very amazing,” Scarpulla said. “I don’t even know how to describe how I felt. I really achieved something in my high school career, getting the role of a captain my junior and my senior year. It’s showing myself I can do these things. I know what I’m doing.” 

But it wasn’t only the extraverted Scarpulla who helped the Hawks find postseason glory with her average of 3.5 goals per game, it also was the quieter yet focused sophomore Sarah Walsh. 

Walsh has played lacrosse since fifth grade, and after a few years she joined M&D Lacrosse, a top club in Central Florida. Her experience allowed her to transition seamlessly into Horizon’s team and climb in the statistics to close the season as the leading scorer with 4.2 goals per game with 63 total, and tied for top assists with 1.1. 

As for the road ahead, all she hopes for is to maintain the success the Hawks have built up over the last two seasons. 

“I hope we get more people to play because it’s not very popular,” Walsh said. “We’re very lucky to have people that have had experience before high school, and it won’t be hard (to maintain).” 

But only time will tell how the future will play out for the Horizon team that’s losing 10 seniors after this historic year. In only four years of the program’s existence, the Lady Hawks already have reeled in two district championship wins and will continue to look toward making more history for the first decade of the program. 

“Getting to see their success has been absolutely amazing because at the end of the day (the coaches) can’t take any of the credit,” Moore said. “We go out there and we guide them on what to do. But at the end of the day, those girls on the field are the ones putting in the work and going out there and winning the game.”