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In
1983, faculty member Pete Corey sponsored the
creation of the UAHS Women's Lacrosse Team. At the
time, only two local programs were fielding women's
lacrosse teams: Worthington and CSG. From 1983-1986,
UA alumnus, Dan Paoletti, served as coach.
In 1987 Tom Stout, the former Jones boys' coach,
was appointed to head the team. He lead the Golden
Bears to a 3rd place finish in the Midwest Schoolgirl's
Lacrosse Tournament in 1991. Shortly after, the MSLA
grew from 16 teams to over 70 teams. This rapid growth
precipitated the development of the Ohio Schoolgirl's
Lacrosse Association, in which UA is a member. Since
the creation of the OSLA, the Golden Bears have won
4 state championships.
In
1992, Wendy Pinta Gallapoo
moved from JV to varsity coach, where she served 16
seasons as the head coach of the Golden Bears. During
her tenure she amassed a 213-78-12 record leading
the Bears to state championships in 2002, 2004, and
2005. UA was also nationally ranked in the top 25
by US
Lacrosse Magazine and Lax
Power polls the same years it garnered state titles.
In 2009 Coach Gallapoo was inducted into the Ohio
Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
UA's
most recent state championship was coached by one
of Gallapoo's former players, Lynda McCandlish.
Coach
McCandlish made history in 2008 by being the
first in Ohio to win a state titles as both a player
and as a coach. She was also the first rookie women's
lacrosse coach to ever win a state championship in
Ohio.
Lynda
McCandlish entered the 2008 season as head coach of
the Golden Bears after a long, successful career as
a player in Upper Arlington. Coach McCandlish began
playing lacrosse in 7th grade as a member of the Hastings
Middle School team. As a freshman on the high school
varsity squad, Coach McCandlish made her first impact
for the Golden Bears. She eventually earned All-District,
All-Region, Honorable Mention All-American, and First
Team All-American honors. In her four years on varsity
she held all-time leading scoring and assist records
(which were later broken by her sister Kristin, who
is a senior on the Northwestern Wildcat Lacrosse Team).
Most notably, she helped lead the Golden Bears to
their first State Championship in 2002.
After
graduating from Upper Arlington in 2002, Coach McCandlish
went on to play at Northwestern University, only a
second-year program at the time. What happened next
is lacrosse history. In 2005, the Wildcats earned
their first-ever NCAA National Championship in lacrosse.
This was historical since no school outside the Eastern
Conference had ever won a Division I championship.
What is even more remarkable is that the core of the
Wildcat team consisted of players, like McCandlish,
from the Midwest and other non-traditional lacrosse
areas. The Wildcats went on to win back-to-back national
championships her senior year. NU coach Kelly Amonte
Hiller is credited with innovating the game of lacrosse
and McCandlish came back to UA to share her knowledge
of and passion for the game with the 2008 Golden Bear
squad, leading them to a state championship that season.
The next year she moved to California and was the
head coach of the San Diego women's club team in 2009.
She then spent two years abroad as a teacher in South
Korea.
McCandlish
has once again returned to UA for the 2012 season
as the head coach of the Hastings Middle School lacrosse
program.
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