Edison girls’ lacrosse making most of debut season

Mia Whalen was nervous last June, when she set up a lunchtime meeting to gauge interest in girls’ lacrosse at Edison High. The Chargers had never offered it as a sport, which surprised Whalen after she transferred from Palo Verde High in Las Vegas as a sophomore.

“I think we had 20 cookies,” Whalen said. “I was like, ‘Man, I hope I’m not just talking to three girls.’ I looked up, and the room was completely packed. Girls were standing against the wall.”

Whalen, now a junior with two previous years of lacrosse experience, worked on getting a program together. The Chargers got their coach after Rob Hendrix, who had coached the Newport Harbor girls’ junior varsity team the past three years, started teaching at Edison this fall.

Other than Whalen, nobody on the Chargers had any lacrosse experience prior to last summer. But Hendrix said the program has grown to 70 girls this spring in its inaugural season, spread across three teams.

The Edison varsity squad played its first home game in program history on Tuesday afternoon on its turf field. Junior Lauren Atencio scored twice as the Chargers beat Canyon 5-3 in a nonleague game, improving to 2-0 this season.

Junior Sarah Boyd, sophomore Mia Brixey and freshman Taya Riley added goals for Edison, which got six saves from junior Olivia Stephens. Whalen and Stephens are two of the four team captains for the Chargers, along with junior Annie Cavener and senior Sarah Horner. Cavener does the draws for Edison.

With so little experience, it may seem like a ragtag group, and the Chargers are young with just two other seniors — Caitlyn Moledo and Hannah Darrow — on the roster. But Edison, which won 11-0 on Saturday at Eastvale Roosevelt in its season opener, is motivated.

“We are all best friends,” said Horner, who plays on the defense along with Whalen and players like sophomore Kamalani Helekahi and freshman Haley Finch. “Since my freshman year, I had always heard there was going to be a lacrosse team. I was down for it, but nobody ever started it. My senior year, I hear about it, and I come out with like a $10 stick. It was so much fun. I was like, ‘I love this.’”

Stephens, another one of the co-captains, is a former softball player.

“I didn’t want to play softball anymore, but you can’t really join a sport junior year and get on a varsity team,” Stephens said. “It’s so cool that we had this team starting. You can just come out, no experience at all.”

Hendrix said his team played nervous in the first half, which still ended with the hosts up 3-0. The Chargers built a 5-1 lead on Boyd’s goal, assisted by Whalen, with 16:30 remaining in the game.

Canyon (1-1) tried to rally. The Comanches’ Cam Bugg answered with a pair of free-position goals that cut Edison’s lead in half, the second coming with eight minutes left.

Edison was able to hang on. In the final minute, Hendrix had Atencio simply run around in circles in the offensive end to run the clock down.

Whalen led the Chargers with two ground balls, while Boyd and freshman Savannah Buyan scooped up two each.

The Chargers, who play host to Murrieta Valley on Thursday at 7 p.m., celebrated wildly after the final whistle.

Whalen said the program had about 20 girls participate in a summer program, and 30 in the fall. Edison is now 70 players strong, more than she could have expected.

“I still can’t even believe it,” she said. “It’s so unreal.”

matthew.szabo@latimes.com

Twitter: @mjszabo