Katelynn Sweeney '21 Recruiting Profile

Lacrosse has been the biggest part of my life since fifth grade. It has helped me become a leader and a better team player. I was brought up through the East Paulding Lacrosse Rec program, and have begun giving back through coaching. I have coached the K1 team at the rec level, assisted with the U11 and U9 teams. I have also coached a U11 travel team with West Cobb lacrosse in Georgia. Giving back to my lacrosse community is very important to me and I help out as much as my schedule will allow.

To me, competition is an important part of life. With healthy competition, there is  natural drive to improve.  Striving to improve makes everyone work harder to become better and hard work is the difference between being good enough and great. I try to work harder than everyone around me.  My dad likes to paraphrase a quote he heard, "Don't complain about playing time. Your job is to work so hard that you play so well the coach can't afford to sit you." I have heard it for so long that I can't think anything else. For example, during the lacrosse season, I show up early to practice and stay late to run extra miles. My teammates always ask me, "Why are you running?" The answer is simple: I want to be the greatest lacrosse player that I can be.

In my opinion, a team is a family. Families can get into arguments, and  the best thing to do is to work through the issue. If something is changing how the players interact with each other as well as how they play, it needs to be discussed as a group. I am a firm believer in that type of team communication. What's  important is that my teammates see a jersey on the field, not necessarily an individual player. We should work to help raise our teammates up and make the team look great and not concern oursleves with who is leading stats.