The lacrosse game Patty West and Alexis Cohen watched on April 6 was as exciting and intense as any other, but something was “definitely weird.”

More than 1,200 miles away, the Northwestern varsity lacrosse team was playing a match in Durham, N.H. One year earlier West and Cohen would have been leading the squad into battle – but things had changed.

Instead, they were stationed on opposite sidelines, serving as assistant coaches for two North Shore rival high schools competing in a regional tournament in St. Louis. For both NU juniors, this was the best way they could maintain a connection with the sport they had played and loved since age 14. Like many members of NU’s 2001 club lacrosse team, West and Cohen did not have the time to keep up with the rigors of playing with the first-year varsity squad in 2002. Of the 16 members of last year’s team, which placed third at the U.S. Lacrosse Association national championships, only one – sophomore Kaitlin Young – remains with the Wildcats this season.

Following last season, West and Cohen had every intention of returning to the squad in the fall. During the summer they assisted NU coach Kelly Amonte Hiller at her summer lacrosse camps and worked with many of the highly recruited high schoolers who would become their teammates in Evanston only weeks later. But West started to have doubts as September approached, and after two weeks of practice with the team, she called it quits.

“It was terrible, a huge decision,” said West, a radio-TV-film major. “It was really hard because Kelly had the two older people who were still playing call me after I told her. … It was really, really hard.”

West had become more focused on her career, and she saw “no future in lacrosse.”

“I want to make movies and it just doesn’t work,” she said.

For Hiller, the situation was dumbfounding. She thought she had done everything right: develop her upperclassmen for varsity competition, bring them to her camps and have them interact with the incoming freshman.

But one by one, they started to drop out.

“One of them quit and the other ones followed,” she said “They thought, ‘Why did she leave? Maybe I don’t belong.’ It was a domino effect, unfortunately.”

Like West, Cohen had every intention of returning to the team this season. She had worked at Hiller’s summer camps in Massachusetts and Long Island, N.Y., and she even brought her stick across the Atlantic to Italy, where she was studying in the fall. But Cohen returned in January to find a squad composed almost entirely of freshman that had gelled through months of practice.

With the team, schoolwork and sorority rush weighing her down, Cohen realized she was in over her head.

“I couldn’t give lacrosse 100 percent of my focus,” she said.

Both West and Cohen said they were not concerned about playing at the varsity level, earning athletic scholarships or fighting for starting jobs with the blue chip recruits. For West, the decision to leave was based on her increased involvement in outside activities and the awkwardness of being one of the only upperclassmen on the roster.

“They were recruited, came to college to play lacrosse and they’re all freshman – I was a junior who did 40 other things,” said West, who is a co-chairwoman of Project Wildcat and was the new member director for Kappa Delta. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, it would be fun to play with you guys, but it would be sort of weird if all my friends were all freshmen now.’ I was very displaced.”

Cohen also felt the social dynamic of the team had changed, and she was unsure when Hiller asked her to take a leadership role.

“She wanted the girls to look up to us because we were older,” said Cohen, a Speech junior. “She wanted us to be leaders, but it’s weird to try to be a leader over (players who have) been together for a longer period. It would have been different if the girls from last year had stayed.”

As her former teammates filed off, sophomore Kaitlin Young stood her ground. Young viewed the departures as motivation to “make it work” with the team. Although she spends more time at practice and in the weight room, and the competition for playing time has increased because of the freshmen, Young refuses to step down.

“I love it and I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she said.

Hiller and her former players have parted ways, but they remain close. She helped many find jobs at area high schools, hoping that they can “help increase interest” in lacrosse in the Midwest. Cohen said coaching was “a great alternative” even though the time commitment is still substantial.

Nonetheless, both women admit being on the sideline isn’t the same.

“It is strange that I’ll never play a competitive sport again,” said Cohen, an assistant with Loyola Academy in Wilmette. “Every time I coach I want to suit up and get in there.”