Six weeks ago, Megan Kinna was playing for Team Moreno in week four of the 2024 Athletes Unlimited season.
Less than a month ago, Dacia Cordingley was playing for Team Canada in the 2024 World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship in Hong Kong.
Today, they both played in Team Canada’s opening game — a 31-0 victory over Finland — at the 2024 World Lacrosse Box Championships in Utica, New York.
The catch: While both Athletes Unlimited and the 2024 World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship were field lacrosse, the two are now playing box lacrosse, a different discipline of the sport.
Kinna said that getting ready for box is different from field.
“I think preparing for Athletes Unlimited was a little bit different — you definitely have to focus more on long-term training and running up and down the field a bit more,” Kinna said. “With box, it’s a lot more fast intervals, so tons of sprints involved in the preparation.”
In box lacrosse, the shot clock is 30 seconds, When possession changes, players run on and off the field in a hockey-style line shift.
“It’s a lot more explosive movements in box, lots of power,” Cordingley said. “We get those 30-second shot clocks that we have to be full pace when running off and then during that two-minute break is when we have to rejuvenate and get ourselves back and going.”
The line shifts are not the only similarity between box lacrosse and hockey. The surface is a rink covered with turf and surrounded by boards and plexiglass. That can make it tricky to judge how the ball is going to bounce.
“I think you just have to be really prepared for the ball to bounce off the boards,” Kinna said. “In comparison to field, you have to learn to set up after the ball goes out of bounds, reset and go again. But here’s there’s no time to think.”
Another notable difference is the style of play for the women. In field, only the goalie is allowed to wear a helmet, and there’s very little contact allowed. In box, everyone is padded and wearing a helmet, and it’s a lot more physical. Both Kinna and Cordingley said that it wears down the body much more so than field.
“I feel like with box I need a lot more recovery with my body because we’re always getting hit,” Cordingley said. “Compared to field, where, yes, we still get hit, but we have a 90-second shot clock to get our breath going and to make sure we’re not injured.”
Kinna said that because of the physicality, anticipation — especially of hits — is crucial in box.
“With setting picks, you need to be really physical,” she said. “You can’t really do hard picks in field; in box you have to be ready to really give it to them.”
There are some more subtle differences. The pocket of the stick is deeper in box than in field. But again, even that comes back to the physicality. Kinna and Cordingley said that the deeper pocket allows the players to take big hits but still hold onto the ball.
Kinna, Cordingley and the rest of the Canadian women return to action tomorrow at 1 p.m against Australia.
