Women’s professional lacrosse is real now. Not a concept, not a press release, not Paul Rabil talking about the future on ESPN. Real games, real rosters, real scores — and after the opening games of the 2025 WLL Championship Series, we have our first actual read on what this league looks like when the ball drops.
The short version: it’s fast, it’s physical, and the talent gap between the top teams and the rest is already visible. Here’s what we learned.
The Format Is the Feature
Lacrosse Sixes — six players a side, smaller field, continuous action — was always going to be a polarizing call. Traditionalists were going to hate it on principle. But watching it live? The pace is legitimately addictive. There’s no dead time. The ball moves, bodies are in motion, and the shooting windows that open in 6v6 make for a highlight reel every other possession. If you showed this to someone who’d never watched lacrosse before, they would not be confused about whether it was exciting.
The physicality caught people off guard too. Smaller field means more contact per minute, not less. These aren’t box players — these are elite field lacrosse athletes crammed into tighter space, and the collisions showed it. The WLL isn’t trying to be polite about being a contact sport.
Boston Guard Looks Like the Team to Beat
Charlotte North running a Lacrosse Sixes offense is unfair. The Guard captain is exactly the type of player this format was built to showcase — fast decision-making, elite off-ball movement, and the kind of court (field?) awareness that can’t be coached into someone. Boston came out structured and sharp, and it showed immediately. Their communication on defense was also noticeably tighter than the competition in the early going — these players had clearly put in camp time together, not just a few walkthroughs.
New York Charging: Izzy Scane Is Every Bit the Problem You Expected
The all-time NCAA scoring record-holder at Northwestern was not going to show up to her first professional games and play it safe. Scane was the most dangerous offensive player on the field in New York’s early action — the kind of player defenders have to account for constantly, which is exactly what opens it up for everyone else around her. The Charging look like a legitimate finals contender and their captain is the reason.
Maryland and California Still Finding Their Footing
Alex Aust Holman and the Maryland Charm have the pieces — Aust Holman is a proven winner at every level she’s played — but the Charm looked like a team still learning how to play together in a new format. That’s not a knock, that’s just where they are. The Lacrosse Sixes chemistry has to be built in-game; there’s no substitute for reps.
California Palms captain Ally Mastroianni showed flashes of the kind of playmaking that earns you a captain’s title, but the Palms were inconsistent. In a compressed tournament format, inconsistency is fatal. They’ll need to lock in fast.
What This Means for 2028
Let’s be direct about the larger context: every game in this Championship Series is an Olympic audition. Lacrosse Sixes is on the program for the 2028 LA Games, and the players who prove they can dominate this format are writing themselves into the national team conversation right now. That adds a layer to every matchup that normal regular-season games don’t carry. You can feel it in how hard these athletes are playing. There’s something bigger than a trophy at stake.
The WLL is exactly what it advertised itself to be: a legitimate professional league built around the future of the sport. Week 1 didn’t just meet expectations — it set the bar higher for everything that follows. Get caught up now, because when the finals arrive on February 17th, you’ll want to have been watching from the start.