The season is just getting started for the Iowa State women’s lacrosse club as it heads onto the turf at the Lied Recreation Center to start its practice.

The team starts running drills as well as it can within the confined space of the turf. It has been practicing for months to prepare for the season and its first tournament in Illinois.

Even though this team has been practicing for months, it is still missing one thing. When you look on the sidelines at practices or games you won’t see a coach. No coach to plan the practices, no coach to set the lineups and no coach to set up a game plan.

That’s where Simone Kull and Kelly Piazza come in. Piazza and Kull are the president and vice president of the club, respectively. But not only that, they also coach the team.

Their coach left the team after last season. A season in which the team was one game away from making it to nationals.

Piazza is a senior who plays defense and midfield for the team. She has been a part of the club since her freshman year and remembers when they team only had 12 players.

“We plan all our practices, we plan conditioning, just really figure out everything,” Piazza said.

So even though the club doesn’t have a traditional coach, the duo of Kull and Piazza take care of all the coaching duties, while still playing on the team.

Kull is a senior and has been a part of the club for all three years and plays goalie for the team.

“It was sort of natural,” Kull said. “Goalie is a big communication position. I do a lot of directing on the field, so that kind of translates off the field to coaching.”

Kull wasn’t expecting this player-coach role when she joined the club, but she has grown into it. Even though it hasn’t always gone right, she has learned from those mistakes to become a better coach.

“The hardest part about being a coach is that you’re not going to please everyone,” Kull said. “You never want to be the bad guy, but it’s important to critique each other to improve.”

The women’s lacrosse club enters the season this year ranked No. 20 in the country. So it goes without saying that making it back to nationals is one of the team’s primary goals this season.

Shannon Norris is a senior on the team and plays defense. This is her second year on the team after joining at the beginning of last season.

“It would be awesome,” Norris said about making it to nationals. “I’m a senior and I really want to get there, it’d be my last opportunity to play lacrosse ever again.”

This year’s nationals take place in Dallas. This would be the club’s farthest trip of the year. To almost all of the team, the feeling of nationals is unfamiliar. One player who has been to nationals before is Piazza.

Piazza was on the team when the club went to nationals during her freshman and sophomore years. Then, just missing the cut last year, that’s the last time the club made it to nationals.

“My freshman year we only had 12 players,” Piazza said. “So we didn’t have any subs and no one really knew who Iowa State was. But we showed them and we came back the next year.” 

Making it to nationals for this team would mean so much to them. Not only for their seniors who are graduating, but also to prove everyone else wrong that they can do this by themselves and without a coach in their corner.

“It would mean that we can go against the odds and that we have the dedication and passion to do this all on our own,” Kull said. “Considering people in our league doubt us and obviously outside the league, that only gets exponentially higher.

“It’s kind of like an underdog story.”