With both of their varsity teams winning District and the Division II team advancing to the state quarterfinals, further than they have in the team’s history, Westlake Lacrosse has quite the season to look back on as the school year comes to a close.

“It was a good season,” Division I sophomore Deuce Smoot said. I loved being with the boys all throughout it all. It was a good run.”

The Division I squad’s season ended on May 6 with an 8-9 loss to Highland Park.

“Overall, we gave our best effort,” sophomore Deuce Smoot said. “It was our seniors’ game, and we brought it to them — It could’ve gone either way. It came down to the logistics of the game … it was a hard loss.”

This year’s graduating class is especially talented, with six players having committed to play in college next season, including defender Jacob Stoebner to Princeton and midfielder Tate Young to Notre Dame. The program has a bit of a gap to fill next year, however: with most of the Division I squad’s players graduating later this month, the majority of next year’s team will not have at playing experience at the high school DI level.

“We only had nine non-seniors as opposed to 20 seniors, so there’s gonna be a big gap between DI and DII,” Deuce said. “But DII really brought it this year so I’m looking forward to it.

Although there’s some pressure and big shoes to fill, the Division II team seems ready for the challenge.

“This season was a huge success,” DII sophomore Spencer Arnold said. “We all improved a lot, and we did very well for such a young team made up of mostly freshmen and sophomores competing against mainly juniors and seniors.”

May 12’s tightly contested 9-13 loss to the the Prosper High School Eagles ended their run at a State championship appearance in a division playing primarily against other programs’ top teams — Westlake is one of a minority of schools which fields teams in both varsity divisions.

“Our loss on Saturday was hard for the whole team,” Deuce said. “We came really far and we’re all looking forward to next season and getting another run at getting Westlake’s first State Championship.”