Hello! Welcome to a brand new episode of Lacrosse All Stars’ podcast — Outside the Eight. This podcast focuses on women’s lacrosse while sharing stories and experiences of current and former players and coaches. Outside the Eight will grow the game, help others know the game and share stories that go beyond the field.
Lauren Benner — Outside the Eight: Women’s Lacrosse Podcast
On this week’s episode of Outside the Eight we are with the Courageous Lauren Benner, and we cover A LOT. Lauren is from Annapolis, Maryland and was a goalie at the University of Virginia. After playing a fifth year at Denver University and being an assistant coach at DU and Louisville, she is now living in Denver, coaching at Valor Christian High School, running girls youth lacrosse across the state, and officiating high school and college level games. Lauren Benner brings so much passion to the sport, steadfastness through adversity, and has many great ideas to keep consistent growth of the game.
Here’s a few highlights:
1. We discuss the benefits of playing three sports in high school and how that sets athletes up for college, and how Lauren knew she wanted to play lacrosse.
2. We talk about how she decided to be the one in the cage, and how her redshirt year was one of the best decisions she could have made.
3. Lauren explains her love for Denver and Colorado life, bringing her East Coast knowledge of lacrosse a little further west.
4. We dive into the loss of her teammate Yeardley Love during their senior season, and also highlight the important work of the One Love Foundation.
5. Lauren discusses the impact she wants to have on the girls she coaches and we relish in the fact that we didn’t grow up with the pressures of social media, and what that means for younger people today.
6. We talk about her coaching experience at the college and high school level, the differences and surprises.
7. A breakdown of Colorado youth lacrosse, and growing the game locally so there is more community surrounding the sport.
8. What it’s like to be an official, the training process and she mentions how you can get involved officiating your local lacrosse leagues.
As always thank YOU for listening. I wanted to give another shoutout to the One Love Foundation and their important work raising awareness of domestic violence and abuse, and the differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Yeardley’s story as an incredible athlete, woman, friend, teammate, and daughter continues on and I’m glad we are able to remember her through conversation with someone who was close to her. As I mention at the end of the episode, they have some great resources including this article about experiencing signs of an unhealthy relationship. Take a peek at their site and if you are interested in having a workshop at your school reach out to them.
Let me know what you think, send feedback to cassie@laxallstars.com, tweet me @cmbrunelle!
Also, be sure to check out Episode 1: The Gaels, Episode 2: The Fearless Maddy Morrissey, Episode 3: The Multitalented Taylor Thornton and Episode 4 and 5 with The Tenacious Trenna Hill. Thanks for listening!
