Following a successful finish to their season last year, where they advanced out of the district and eventually fell in the regional quarterfinal against West Potomac, the lacrosse team is preparing for its upcoming season.

Currently, the team is in their first week of training before tryouts are complete and Head Coach Bill Maglisceau finalizes any adjustments for lineups and rosters.

This week, the focus in practice will be improving physically as well as playing better as a team.

Tryouts will take place on Feb. 18 and will feature several technical related drills and a scrimmage.

“Even though tryouts officially started on Feb. 18, they initially start by making an impression with coaches during the offseason,” senior goalie Sam Phan said.

Last year, the game that led to the regional quarterfinal against West Potomac featured a clutch 8-7 win in the first round of the regional tournament against Woodbridge.

In that game, senior Alex Bellem scored four goals along with seniors Matt Dinh and Cameron Foti who each scored two.

Overall, the team did well turning around the unfortunate season that they were starting to have. Of their first ten games, the Atoms only won once.

Then, leading up to postseason, they turned their season around and won three of their last five.

Now, the boys head into a new season which means new opportunity. The team will look to have a dynamic relative to that of those last five games (three of which they won) last season to hopefully advance past the regional quarterfinal this year.

“This season, our goals are to get more wins and hopefully win the District Tournament and advance further in the regional bracket,” Bellem said.

“[In order to be successful this season] our main focus [in practices] will be to perfect our game plans and plays that we worked on last year,” Bellem said.

The first scrimmage of the season will take place on March 2 at home against C.D. Hylton.

Then, they will face Woodbridge again, which they beat in the Regional Tournament, for their second scrimmage on March 7.

These two games will play an important role in gauging how well the experienced team will do with perfecting their plays.

The regular season will kick off a week later on March 14 against Washington-Lee, a team that had a record identical to AHS last season going 4-11.

“Going into the season, AHS lacrosse has many strengths under its belt such as great leadership, coaching, and athleticism,” Bellem said. “We have very strong expectations, especially with most of our starting lineup on offense.”

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the team has a shot at success this season which may feature a district win or advancing further in the regional tournament.

“Our overall goal this season is to make it to the conference championship and pass the first round of the playoffs,” Bellem said.