School: Central Bucks South
Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Bethany Hamilton
Favorite team: Phillies!
Favorite memory competing in sports: Spending the summers traveling to tournaments with my Ultimate Goal Lacrosse team.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that happened while competing in sports: It was during a lacrosse tournament when two friends and I were looking for each other in the hotel. We realized an hour later that we were all staying in different hotels.
Music on iPod: Country
Future plans: Go to Penn State Main Campus, major in Elementary Education, minor in Mathematics and study abroad in England
Words to live by: ‘Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.’
One goal before turning 30: Travel Europe
One thing people don’t know about me: I’m half Chinese and half Irish.
Coach Janique Craig describes Kristen Lawlor as an ‘unsung hero’ on the lacrosse field.
“She creates the plays for our other attackers to score,” the Central Bucks South coach said. “She might not be our top scorer, but she’s the one creating the goals, playing defense to the restraining line and putting pressure on the other team.
“Those kinds of players don’t always get the credit and accolades they deserve.”
A four-year starter, Lawlor isn’t concerned about receiving credit or accolades. The CB South senior – who plays low attack - enjoys her role, and she is passionate about her sport.
“I’ll start out attack on the draw, but a lot of times if the midfield gets tired, I’ll just push down and play the attack going down on defense and help bring the balls in transition,” she said. “That’s basically my goal.
“I’m not really into – go to goal and shoot every time. I look more for the smart play. Sometimes my coach says I should go in more than I do.”
When she’s not playing lacrosse, Lawlor can often be found coaching. She has coached lacrosse with Doylestown Athletic Association (DAA) and also has coached field hockey for Warrington Warwick Athletic Association (WWAA). She is also the first in line to help Craig with clinics she holds for youngsters.
“I can definitely see myself coaching someday just because I love the sport of lacrosse,” Lawlor said. “I love working with kids and introducing the sport to them because I wish someone had introduced it to me even earlier than fourth grade because I know some people who have been doing it since first grade.
“I would have loved to have jumped right in when I was younger.”
As it was, Lawlor’s first competitive sport was softball, although she says she tried them all. She was introduced to lacrosse in fourth grade when she began playing for DAA. She also began playing field hockey for WWAA around the same time. Softball and the other sports quickly fell by the wayside.
“I wasn’t really into softball,” Lawlor said. “In softball, I couldn’t wait and bat. I wanted to bat and keep going.
“I really like fast-paced sports, which is why I started playing field hockey and lacrosse.”
By the time she was in middle school, Lawlor was playing Bulldogs lacrosse with Mount Carmel CYO. In eighth grade, she joined the club circuit, competing with Ultimate Goal until she was in 10th grade and switched to Bucks Select Lacrosse.
Lawlor - who dropped field hockey after her sophomore season to focus on lacrosse – found herself in the varsity starting lineup as a freshman. The transition to high school lacrosse was an easy one.
“The girls were so friendly,” she said. “A lot of them were older sisters of my friends, and it was honestly such a fun environment, and the team was really close.
“Coach Craig was great too. She was very welcoming, and you didn’t feel like the little freshmen. You just felt like part of the team right away.”
Lawlor was one of four freshmen to make the cut.
“Right from the start, Kristen has always been extremely coachable,” Craig said. “She’s dedicated, and from the start of practice to the end, she’s always working hard.
“She’s always been doing the extra things out of season to make herself a better player, and she’s always helping me during the offseason either shooting on the goalkeepers, helping me with my clinics or just working on her game.”
As a junior, Lawlor made the difficult decision to cut back on the time she was investing in lacrosse and forego her goal of playing collegiate lacrosse to focus instead on her academics.
“I decided to stop doing club teams and recruiting, and I was just going to concentrate on school because I knew I wanted to go to Penn State,” she said. “Lacrosse is a lot of work, especially D-1.
“It was a really hard decision for me to make, especially thinking about it now during lacrosse season. My whole summers in past years have been put into lacrosse. To decide not to play in college – it was definitely a hard decision for me. Penn State – when I went there, I knew that had to be the school for me.”
This fall Lawlor will be attending the school of her dreams where she plans to play club lacrosse.
“I heard it’s a lot of fun,” she said. “I was worried at first because I’m so used to playing competitively. I talked to one of my teammates who graduated two years ago, Natalie Rube, who does club at Delaware. She said it’s almost as competitive as D-3, which I would be willing to play, but I didn’t want to go to any of the D-3 schools.”
A member of the National Honor Society, Lawlor – who is enrolled in all AP and honors classes – boasts a 4.01 GPA.
“I started taking a lot of AP courses because I knew I wanted to get into Penn State main campus,” she said. “In the end, I’m really glad I chose to take the AP classes and focus a little less on sports. I feel it will really help prepare me in the future.
“It kept me very busy, but it’s definitely worth it.”
At Penn State, Lawlor will major in elementary education with a minor in mathematics.
“Through a lot of community service at school, I was working with younger children, and I realized it was definitely what I wanted to do,” she said. “My 10th grade English teacher – I talked to her a lot about it, and she’s the one that really made me decide.”
Lawlor credits her parents for teaching the importance of academics.
“I have to say I was really lucky to have parents like this that let me and my brothers do every sport that we wanted, but they said that school comes first, and as soon as our grades started dropping, we can’t go to practice,” she said.
Community service is also a major part of Lawlor’s life. She has been involved in a program called Barkley Buddies where she shadowed a young girl with learning disabilities. She also helped with the autistic class at South, and for her graduation project, she spent 40 hours in the classroom. And, of course, she has volunteered countless hours sharing her love of lacrosse with youngsters.
Ask Lawlor the highlight of her four-year varsity lacrosse career, and she doesn’t hesitate.
“Definitely the team,” she said. “We’re very close, and we’re always hanging out together, whether we’re at practice or games or outside of practice on weekends.
“There’s definitely a bond with the team and the girls on it that will go beyond high school.”
Although Lawlor doesn’t live in the spotlight, she is the type of player coaches covet.
“She’s always positive, always working hard,” Craig said. “Her actions speak for themselves. She’s just a positive role model on and off the field.”
