In 1982, two Guilford students decided the College needed a women’s lacrosse team. So they created one. No field lined, no locker room waiting, no equipment ready. Just two young women with a belief that if they found enough bodies, they’d have a team.

Their names: Donna Becker Plylar ’84 and Kathy Chang ’84.

Now, 43 years later, a plaque above one of the lockers in the women’s lacrosse locker room carries their names. The plaque is a memory, a thank you. It’s for every player who ever said yes and grabbed a stick when Donna and Kathy asked, “Want to try something new?”

Ronna White Phillips ’83 was there from the start. She remembers two friends who wouldn’t let go of an idea. “Donna and Kathy were the trailblazers,” she says. “They were the ones with the drive and the vision. Without them, we simply wouldn’t have had a team.”

The “team” in those days looked more like a pickup game. They recruited anyone. Roommates. Basketball players. Students who had never seen a lacrosse stick. “What we lacked in skill,” Ronna says, “we made up for in enthusiasm.”

They played on any grass they could find on campus. The lawn in front of Dana Auditorium was their favorite spot. They shared sticks. Learned rules on the fly. Donna remembers the scramble: “We were trying to create something from nothing. Lacrosse wasn’t well known in the South, so just finding enough people was an adventure.”

By 1983, their stubbornness turned into a varsity team. They took their lumps, sure. But they wore Guilford jerseys. They had made something real. “We may not have won every game,” Ronna says, “but we earned respect.”

The women who built Guilford lacrosse haven’t stopped caring. This year, Rhonna turned her dining room in Birmingham, Ala., into a one-woman call center – spreadsheet, phone, the works – tracking down former teammates. She and others raised more than $2,000 for the locker naming project.

The dedication itself came Sept. 27, during Homecoming & Family Weekend. Alumni and current players jammed shoulder to shoulder in the locker room, a mix of generations bound by the same maroon jerseys. Some remembered the beginning. Some had never heard it until that day. All of them felt it.

For today’s team, the plaque is more than a piece of metal. It’s a marker of how they got here. They now know the stories about Donna and Kathy canvassing the Quad for players, about women willing to chase a dream when no one was watching.

“It’s incredibly meaningful to know that today’s players are aware of where the program came from,” says Donna, a Greensboro resident who was present for the dedication. “I never imagined back in 1982 that something we started would still be going strong more than 40 years later.”

Ronna stood in the locker room chatting with current players who brought flowers and thanks.  “Walking into here and seeing their names up there, I felt a wave of pride,” she says. “It validated what we worked so hard for. We weren’t just a group of students kicking around an idea. We built something that still matters.

“I became prouder of what was accomplished after I was long gone than what I was aware of while I was here. I suspect I’m not the only one.”