By Noah Vinsky / USF ZNews
TAMPA – USF women’s lacrosse is gearing up for their first season of play when it makes its program debut Friday against Kennesaw State at Corbett Stadium.
The Bulls have been practicing multiple times a week at the USF Track and Field Stadium since their first recruiting class arrived in the Fall of 2023.
Coach Mindy McCord, who was hired in 2022, said that the experience almost seems “surreal” after years of preparation for the program debut.
“We have experience,” McCord said. “But there’s a lot of kids that just don’t know what they don’t know, but they’re talented and love the game. So now we have to learn to win games.”
USF announced it would add women’s lacrosse as a Division I sport in 2021. The university certified the sport last September.
McCord said the Bulls added 16 new players last year.
“We almost had two new teams, like a team that had been training for a year and a brand new team of first year players with transfers,” McCord said.
Attacker Alison Harbaugh said that the season debut will be a moment that she will remember forever.
“I just feel like that day, you’ll look back at it and be like, that was a really cool day,” Harbaugh said.
Harbaugh transferred to USF from Notre Dame in 2023. She appeared in 16 games in three seasons for the Fighting Irish.
After graduating from Notre Dame, Harbaugh said she came to USF to make an impact on and off the field.
“I knew that [the coaches] were going to build a great culture from the ground up, and getting to be a part of that and kind of build its first years and leave a legacy for years to come, was just an opportunity I couldn’t turn down,” Harbaugh said.