Apple Valley's Coleman Starts Anew Again

Jenaye Coleman is getting a rush of deja vu.

As a freshman in high school, Coleman joined the Apple Valley girls lacrosse team in its inaugural season. A new player on a brand new team, Coleman initially chose lacrosse as an alternative to track and field.

But over the next four years, Coleman became a defensive force for an Apple Valley program that went from simply learning the sport to a 12-4 record and a trip to the Section 3 semifinals last spring.

Fast forward, and Coleman is again a freshman—this time at Marquette University in Milwaukee. And once again, she’ll be helping a young program in need of shaping an identity. She joins an up-start Eagles program that began practice Monday but will not play its first official game in school history until the spring of 2013.

There’s a long journey ahead—Marquette will only practice in 2011-12—but the process is nothing Coleman hasn’t seen before. She’s embracing the challenge.

“We’re not all new to the sport but brand new to the team,” she said. “It’s new to the school, obviously, but I’m really excited. We’re just trying to get ready to get back into the game.”

It is Coleman’s passion for lacrosse that makes it worth the wait.

Coleman admits she knew nothing about the sport when she joined ’s squad as a freshman. But she and her family grew to love lacrosse, tuning in to watch the game on TV and slowly but surely learning the nuances of the sport.

And as time went on, Coleman began to excel. As a 5-foot-4 defender, she became a vital part of the Eagles program under coach Alex Ross. 

Day after day, she and her teammates continued to improve.

“She’d come home early on and would say, ‘We’re doing things in the first or second week of practices that we did halfway through the season last year,’” said Nikki Coleman, Jenaye’s mother. “So it was noticeable.”

She lettered three times with Apple Valley, earned All-Conference honors twice and was a team captain during her senior year.

Along the way she found a pastime that became a vital part of her high school experience and an avenue toward college.

On Monday, she and her 11 teammates—including nine freshmen and two sophomores—began their first day of practice at Marquette. She and teammate Lauren Radtke, from Palatine, IL, both bring experience of playing on their high school’s inaugural teams. That’s something Eagles coach Meredith Black said will be an advantage for her new program.

Even with no games to help motivate the team during the 2012 season, Black said having Coleman and Radtke motivating the team, telling their teammates it will be worth all the hard work and preparation in the end, will help fill the void of having no upperclassmen on the roster.

She said Coleman’s passion for the sport and dedication to the rebuilding project was evident from Day 1.

“She’s so enthusiastic about the idea of starting a program and being there from the beginning,” Black said. “Her attitude and her excitement for the new program was inspiring to me, and of course it was a no-brainer to have her on our team and have the enthusiasm on our team.”

It’s the beginning of a familiar journey—one that provided four years of memories once before and could do the same during Coleman’s college career.

She’s about to leave her mark on another program, something that hit her family as they moved her into school in late-August.

“We kind of laughed with some of the other parents, too. If our kids are sad (about leaving home), we’ll be sad,” Nikki Coleman said. “But even our goodbyes at Marquette—she was in the right place. It feels so right for her.”