Lacrosse players will be chasing Olympic dreams at the Atlas Cup this weekend

What do an aspiring Secret Service member, a junior in college, a government consultant, a professional men’s lacrosse player and an aspiring lawyer all have in common?

They will be among a select group of players on a lacrosse field in Maryland this week, hoping to make their individual cases to be Olympians in 2028.

Friday through Sunday, the Atlas Cup, an international competition, will be held at USA Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks. Fans will get a look at “sixes,” the lacrosse format to be played at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Lacrosse is an official Olympic event for the first time since the 1908 London Olympics. Current and former college players who might not have previously pictured being an Olympian now can.

“If you’re ultimately ever given the opportunity to try to even go to the Olympics, you got to take it,” said former Maryland lacrosse player Kori Edmondson, who is also working to become a member of the Secret Service.

“My life’s lining up at this historic time,” said Anna Brandt, a former Hereford High School standout who’s studying for the LSAT. “What a privilege that is. So I feel like I need to just go after it and [put] my best foot forward.”

This week, the United States’ sixes teams participated in their second fall training camp ahead of games against the men’s and women’s teams from Canada, Ireland and the Haudenosaunee Nationals this weekend.

The Atlas Cup is the second of three international sixes events this year. The final event is the Lexus Global Lacrosse Games in December in Springfield, Virginia. The first was the Pan-American Sixes Championships in Ontario, where both American teams eked out one-point wins over Canada in October to take home gold medals.

Winning the event, and advancing to the world championships next October, automatically qualified the United States for the Olympics as the host nation. Four more nations will punch their tickets to the Olympics through the world championships.

The sixth and final Olympic team will be determined at a qualifying event in March 2028.

This week, the best lacrosse players in America altered their schedules to attend training. University of North Carolina junior midfielder Kate Levy, who attended McDonogh School, is missing three days of classes. Her professors understand.

“You throw the buzzword ‘Olympics’ in there, and they’re like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome!’” Levy said.

Many of the American Olympic hopefuls have fond memories of watching the Olympics. Sydni Black, a former Patriot League Attacker of the Year at Loyola, said watching Michael Phelps and the “Fab Five” gymnasts headlined by Gabby Douglass in 2012 sparked her desire to be an elite athlete.

Joey Spallina watched this year’s U.S.-Canada men’s hockey final with some of his Canadian roommates. Now he could have the opportunity to be on that same platform.

“Just to be in a position where you can do that, go play at probably the pinnacle of the sport, it’s unreal,” said Spallina, who plays for the Premier Lacrosse League’s Maryland Whipsnakes and also runs lacrosse camps and clinics.

The version of the game on display this weekend will look different from the “field lacrosse” discipline many are accustomed to in NCAA play.

Sixes, created in 2018, features five players and a goalie, while college lacrosse features 10 players for men and 12 for women. The field for sixes is smaller. Games are four eight-minute quarters, and the shot clock is just 30 seconds; in NCAA lacrosse, teams have an 80-second shot clock.

Faceoffs take place only at the start of each quarter and overtime. Following a score, goalies retrieve the ball and make an outlet pass to their teammates to resume play.

Many players likened it to pickup basketball — the game is quicker, with more fast breaks. Players are required to play both ends of the field. There’s less specialization of positions (there are no defenders with long poles or faceoff specialists). That means some have to make adjustments.

For Spallina, that means getting the ball out of his stick quicker. For Black, an attacker, she’s been incorporating defensive footwork into her training. For Levy, she thinks about transition defense and being one step ahead of her opponent.

Lindsey Munday, the women’s sixes coach and former USC lacrosse coach, said it is a “different game” and players and coaches have to be adaptable, making adjustments and learning after each game.

Andy Shay, the men’s sixes coach, cosigned, adding it’s been a lot of “trial and error” for his staff as they watch film and bounce ideas off each other. He’s happy with the progress they’ve made. As for the new format, the Yale head coach is a fan.

“It’s kind of the purest version of the sport, in my opinion,” Shay said. “A lot of people don’t agree, and that’s fine. But I happen to really like it. And, talking to these guys, they love playing it.”

In the coming months, both coaches will be faced with tough decisions as they whittle a talented pool of athletes to an 11-player roster. The players know that, too. They expressed gratitude for simply having an opportunity.

Their hope is that, by introducing the game globally, it’ll create more interest in the sport.

Brandt went to high school 6 miles north of Team USA’s practice facility and remembers when it was being built. She works out at the facility now. And she’s inspired by how much the sport has grown.

She and her family used to watch the Olympics, flipping between channels to view sports they’d never seen before. It’s that exact phenomenon that makes her excited to imagine how much the game could expand.

“It is really exciting for the younger generation, because now they’re in a spot where lacrosse is on TV and they do see a future,” Brandt said. “It might be the first time someone’s seeing it, which is so important. That’s sometimes more important than acquiring a fan who kind of knows what it is, just getting new eyes on it. I think the Olympics is the perfect stage to do that.”