Abigail Nolan’s journey playing lacrosse has been fast and unexpected, resulting in championship wins.
Now, Nolan, a senior biology major, has the Olympics as her next goal.
Growing up in West Orange, New Jersey, with few opportunities to play lacrosse, she found her way onto the field thanks to a friend’s encouragement.
“When I was growing up, there weren’t really women’s club teams around me, and my town didn’t have a rec program,” Nolan says.
“But my best friend at the time, her dad had played lacrosse, so he got her onto a boys’ team. When we got to [West Orange], my school started an inaugural team for women’s lacrosse, and she convinced me to join it with her.”
That decision changed everything. Nolan says she quickly realized she had a natural talent for the game, and after just one season, she took her skills to the next level, joining a club team, Mad Dog, that summer.
Nolan credits the club team for helping her improve her skills, and for helping with the college recruitment period.
“My club coach is the one who helped me find Southern, and that’s kind of how I ended up here,” she says. “It all happened really fast, because it was only a year after I had started to play that the recruiting portal opened for me.”
Her late start in lacrosse did not hinder her progress; in fact, it helped her thrive in a Southern’s competitive Division II program.
Nolan was recruited as a midfielder.
“On my high school team, everybody was a beginner,” she says. As a result, her team met with many losses.
“But at Southern, our conference is the most competitive for women’s lacrosse in Division II,” she says.
She credits Southern coaches Kevin Siedlecki and Jill Temple with improving her lacrosse IQ.
“At this level, it’s not so much about your athleticism. It’s more about who can outsmart the other one, who can put in more hours to the technical work,” she says.
The hours spent perfecting “the draw” with Temple have added a new dimension to her game.
“The draw” happens at the start of the game, the start of every quarter and after every goal scored. Three midfielders from each team fight for possession. Two of them put their sticks back-to-back and on the whistle, try push the ball up in the air towards their teammate.
“[Learning the draw] has totally added a whole other element of something that I can do and contribute,” she says.
While playing lacrosse at the university has been a significant achievement, it is not without its challenges. Lacrosse provided an avenue to further her education through a scholarship while staying deeply involved in the sport.
“It made a lot of sense to help me pay for school. It’s something to keep me involved in the sport,” Abigail says. “At Southern, I feel like we connect over ambition and drive, and we want to achieve the same goals together.”
“It made a lot of sense to help me pay for school. It’s something to keep me involved in the sport,” Nolan says. “At Southern, I feel we connect over ambition, drive, and we want to achieve the same goals together.”
One of Nolan’s favorite other aspects of the university is the academic environment.
“I have to say the biology department is one of my favorite things about Southern. I love my professors so much. They have really gotten to know me,” she says.
“They really support me as well. They want us to take any opportunity to go abroad and broaden our horizons.”
However, balancing lacrosse with her studies and international commitments is not easy. She says it has been very difficult being away during the lacrosse season.
“It’s really hard for me to be watching those games on my phone. I’m screaming at my phone from Europe, at my teammates, because I want them to win so bad.”
Despite these challenges, she feels supported by her coaches and teammates even while she is gone.
“My coach, Kevin, he realizes that this is something that genuinely makes me happy, and he loves that Southern lacrosse is represented internationally.”
Nolan’s journey to playing lacrosse on an international stage has been filled with unexpected opportunities and rewarding triumphs.
Between January and March, she traveled back and forth from the United State to Portugal to play with the Irish Women’s Senior Sixes Team, competing for the first-ever European Lacrosse Sixes Cup.
The team entered the tournament with high expectations, hoping to place well enough to qualify for future competitions.
However, the thought of winning gold was not frequently discussed, until the team finally won it.
“We didn’t really want to put the pressure on ourselves,” Nolan says. “But then, we ended up winning gold at that tournament. Just to be on the first-ever Irish sixes team and also to win gold in that first year, it was the craziest moment of my whole life, to be honest.”
Her connection with Ireland Lacrosse started in 2023 when she was following the U20 team at the European Championships in Prague, Czech Republic.
She was so inspired she reached out to the organization and attended a satellite tryout in Connecticut for Irish citizens living abroad.
With encouragement from Siedlecki, she tried out and earned a spot on the Irish U20 Women’s National Team for the 2024 World Championships in Hong Kong. Nolan played on the Irish U20 women’s national team from November 2023 until August 2024.
Preparing for Hong Kong presented its challenges.
“It was kind of hard, because we are from all over the world,” Nolan says. “We had a lot of meetings on Zoom with our strength and conditioning coach. That was something I was used to from Southern, having workout packets and things to follow, but it really helped get everyone to the same fitness level.”
The first real opportunity to practice with her teammates came at the Heritage Cup, a recreational tournament that served as an early test for team chemistry. Later, the national team training camp in Dublin provided an intense, 72 hours of full lacrosse immersion.
“It’s difficult mentally to get through that weekend,” Nolan says. “Your body is hurting, you’ve just flown across the ocean, you’re jet-lagged, but that’s where we really learned each other.”
Competing in Portugal was a vastly different experience from Hong Kong.
“I’ve had experience growing up going to Europe, but when we went to Hong Kong, it was like being on a different planet entirely,” Nolan says. “It was so much harder to communicate.”
She also noticed structural differences between the tournaments. The European Championships took place in a single stadium, creating a close-knit atmosphere among teams.
“You’re constantly around the other teams,” Nolan says.
“In Hong Kong, the stadiums were all over the city, but in Portugal, we were always playing at one of three fields in the same complex. You’d go watch a match, and then those players would come cheer for you at your next game. It felt like an international sleepaway camp.”
The competition itself tested her adaptability.
“With Sixes, the short shot clock is really hard,” Nolan says. “I come from a more defensive background, so it was hard for me to initiate offense that fast.”
Her most nerve-wracking moment came in the championship game against the Czech Republic. Ireland had already faced them earlier in the tournament and lost.
“I was nervous for sure,” Nolan says. “Those girls grew up playing international-style lacrosse, and I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to adjust in just two days. But having the expectation that they’d come out playing physically helped us win that game.”
One of the toughest games Nolan has ever played for Ireland was at the U20 2024 World Championships against England. The stakes were high, while they could afford to lose, it had to be by no more than two goals to advance past the pool stage. Instead, they lost by four, knocking them down a bracket.
“That game was just tough. Like, that’s a big rivalry, Ireland versus England,” Nolan says. “They are the closest girls to us, like, culturally, and yet there’s a lot of animosity there. That’s the game you really want to win, the game you want to show up for.”
The loss stung deeply, lingering for days as the entire team processed the disappointment. But beyond the competition itself, the emotional weight of facing England made the match even more intense.
That same passion fuels her when playing for the university, especially in matchups against the University of New Haven, a rivalry that extends across every sport at the university.
“I grew up in New Jersey, but New Haven is where I’ve spent the most time in the last three years. I love it here, and I feel very strongly about winning that game,” Nolan says.
While balancing lacrosse and academics is difficult, she credits the university’s faculty and coaching staff for their unwavering support. Nolan’s commitment to both her academics and athletics is evident as she prepares for the next phase of her journey.
“At the end of this semester, I’m graduating with my undergraduate degree, but I have an extra year of lacrosse eligibility, so I’m staying at Southern to do my master’s,” Nolan says.
Southern’s 4+1 academic program allows her to continue her education while playing lacrosse, offering her an opportunity to earn a second degree at the same time it takes most people to get one.
Beyond that, her aspirations extend to the senior field team for Ireland, and possibly the Olympics if lacrosse becomes an accepted sport.
“The European Championship win qualified us for the World Games in China this summer,” Nolan says. “Whatever team we send there will have to really [work hard] to place in the top three to be in the discussion for the Olympics. That’s the next goal.”
