Image courtesy of Women's Lacrosse League, edited by Sarah M. ‘27
The Launch of the Women's Lacrosse League
By: Juliet F. ‘27
Did you know that the sport of women's lacrosse in the U.S. started at The Bryn Mawr School? It was Rosabelle Sinclair, a PE teacher at BMS, who introduced and established the first female lacrosse team in 1926. Years later, women’s lacrosse would become more popular and debut the Women’s Lacrosse League in 2025. Our very own head varsity lacrosse coach and assistant athletic director, Coach Wolf, is bridging the gap between our school and the professional lacrosse league for women.
In 2019, the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) was launched into the sports world by professional lacrosse player, Paul Rabil and his brother, Mike Rabil. From touring coast to coast, the league brought lacrosse to a national stage, exposing the sport to fans who were interested in watching the best professional men’s lacrosse players play and compete for championships. A year later in 2020, the PLL launched Unleashed which was “a women’s lacrosse content and training platform designed to support the growth and visibility of girls and women’s lacrosse.” Unleashed helped over 1,000 girls lacrosse players expose themselves to coaching from some of the most talented women’s professional lacrosse players. More recently in February of 2025, the PLL made their largest investment in women’s lacrosse to date. They launched the Women’s Lacrosse League (WLL), a revolutionary progression for the sport of lacrosse.
“There is no better product right now out there for women's lacrosse professionally or lacrosse professionally in general,” said Coach Wolf during an interview with The Quill, “When I was playing lacrosse in highschool, the pivotal moment and the goal was to play in college and you'd be lucky if you got an invite to try out for the U.S. team, but that was it. That was the highest you could go.” The future of women’s lacrosse and women’s professional sports in general is looking very promising. “Especially in the last few years, there has been such a boom in women's sports like the Caitlyn Clark effect, the new 3v3 women's basketball league, and women's professional hockey. It is all happening at a really fast pace and it’s exploding. The market is just itching for awesome athletes, and the women are awesome athletes,” explains Coach Wolf. The WLL introduces a new aspiration for girls and women who may want to play the sport they love professionally while also making money.
“The athletes were treated like professional athletes, ESPN covered and broadcasted everything, the facility was gorgeous, and players and coaches were mic’d up. You were treated really well and the players were paid fairly. It was incredible. I mean, the sky’s the limit with this crew,” said Coach Wolf on her week coaching one of the professional teams at the inaugural WLL Championship Series. The new league played in the Olympic Sixes format during the WLL Championship Series and will play in the same format during lacrosse’s reemergence in the 2028 Olympics. “The sixes format is new, it’s fast, and it reminds me of basketball. There are no draws in between goals, instead you get the ball and you go. It is, I think, for people who don't know lacrosse, an easy thing to watch and get excited about,” Coach Wolf argues.
With the start of the Women’s Lacrosse League comes a new feeling of inspiration, change, and growth for lacrosse. Coach Wolf claims that “It's not just a niche sport anymore, it's not just a college thing, it's universal across the country and world. It’s blowing up. It's real.”