Chillicothe girls lacrosse players led by coach Allen Hawk ready for next season
CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Girls lacrosse started at Chillicothe High School around thirteen years ago. What was originally started as a club sport by Ryan Camponeshi gained popularity and was school-sanctioned in 2014. While it was a club sport, girls lacrosse became a popular option and continues to grow today.
Current head coach Allen Hawk joined the coaching staff four years ago as a volunteer goaltending coach. Since then, Hawk served as the head junior varsity coach for one season and is entering his third season as varsity head coach.聽
Coach Hawk moved to Ohio in 2006 to be closer to family. He raised his kids in Chillicothe, both graduating from Chillicothe High School in the last two years. Hawk first got into coaching through the Upward Basketball program, coaching kids ranging from third to eighth grade. Coach Hawk had good things to say about former coach Camponeshi. 鈥淐oach Camponeshi played lacrosse growing up and through his college days in Maryland and grew this program over his 11 seasons as head coach. His last season we had over 30 girls split between Varsity and JV squads.鈥�
As we all know, COVID affected a lot of teams in the area. 鈥淲e have carried approximately 20 girls the last two seasons, and only a Varsity squad. We are not a very well-known sport in the area, but we have a lot of athletes from other sports (soccer, basketball, and softball) that start as high schoolers and excel in the sport.鈥� There aren鈥檛 many other girls lacrosse teams in the surrounding counties, so Chillicothe has to travel a lot for their season to take place. 鈥淲e are scheduled to travel to St. Albans, West Virginia, this season in the first out-of-state game for our program. Our opponents range from Sunbury to Cincinnati.鈥�
Coach Hawk is optimistic looking forward to the upcoming season. 鈥淟ast season we had a very good group of seniors that led us to some very good wins and a couple of very close 1-goal losses to D1 schools. We focus on fundamentals of the game and playing as a team. We have a very good group coming up next season also and are looking forward to improving our win-loss record from last season.鈥� Chillicothe is always looking to add more girls to the roster. 鈥淲e welcome any girl who is enrolled at Chillicothe or is homeschooled or attends private school and lives in the Chillicothe City School district to try the sport. It is a very fast and exciting game and our team is a close knit group of girls. One of our assistant coaches is a recent graduate of Chillicothe and came back to help last season.鈥澛�
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