Pro women’s lacrosse stops in the Philly area before taking off on tour. For some, it’s a homecoming.

While none of the four teams in the Women’s Lacrosse League represent Philadelphia on their jerseys, there are enough local players, coaches, and administrators to give the league a Philly feel.

After running two condensed Championship Series schedules in 2025 and this winter, the WLL is preparing to embark on its first 10-week season in a touring format.

Its preseason began this week with a training camp for the league’s four teams at the Union’s WSFS Bank Sportsplex in Chester. For the league’s Philly-area natives, training camp is an opportunity to stop at home before the WLL goes on tour alongside the men’s Premier Lacrosse League, which owns and operates the women’s league.

The WLL has Philadelphia-area connections from top to bottom. Rachael DeCecco is the senior vice president of lacrosse for the WLL and the PLL. She played high school lacrosse at Marple Newtown and won the Tewaaraton Award as the nation’s most outstanding women’s college player at Princeton in 2003.

Colleen Magarity, the head coach of the New York Charging, played at Germantown Academy and runs HHH Philly, a high-level club lacrosse program. Amy Orcutt, an assistant coach for the Charging, played and coached at Conestoga. Laurie DeLuca, the head coach of the Boston Guard, is a Havertown native and played at Haverford High School.

As the director of HHH Philly and head coach at Penn Charter, Magarity has seen firsthand the level of women’s lacrosse talent coming out of the Philadelphia area.

“Philadelphia lacrosse has always been a hotbed,” Magarity said. “And it’s been behind Baltimore and Long Island, but I think it’s certainly surpassing them, or catching up.”

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Eight HHH Philly alumni will play in the WLL, and four will play for Magarity’s Charging, including Darcy Felter, who won a Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association state title playing under Magarity at Penn Charter in 2022.

“Watching what they’ve done when they were in seventh and eighth grade, what they did in college, to now be able to play pro and do it well, is huge,” Magarity said. “I just think it’s great for the sport.”

Professional women’s lacrosse has been unstable in the past. Magarity played professionally in two leagues, both of which no longer exist. Some of the WLL players, including Maddie Burns and Katie Detwiler, played professionally in the Athletes Unlimited league until it ceased operations in December 2024.

Burns, a defender for the Boston Guard who played at Germantown Academy, is hoping the WLL can become the primary destination for elite lacrosse players after college.

“If I could have predicted what I would’ve been doing [now] when I was a high schooler, I did not even have the dreams or aspirations to do this, because you just didn’t see it happening,” Burns said. “So to be able to now have a league that younger girls can train for and work toward, it’s only going to push the sport and push the level of play that much further.”

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Some WLL players have day jobs, but for others, the league offers a path to make lacrosse a full-time career by mixing coaching, running clinics, and playing.

Detwiler, a Devon native who played at Archbishop Carroll, is an assistant coach at St. Joseph’s in addition to playing defense for the California Palms.

“When I was growing up, there was no professional lacrosse,” Detwiler said. “It was so cool … when I was in college, to be able to know that was a goal. And now all those younger players know that as well.”

The WLL’s season will begin on May 16 in Pawtucket, R.I., with a game between the Charging and the Guard. One WLL game will be played at each stop of the PLL’s barnstorming tour, culminating in the inaugural WLL championship on Aug. 15 at Subaru Park.

Olivia Dirks, a Wayne native and Episcopal Academy graduate, grew up playing youth soccer in the Union Juniors program and walked out of the tunnel alongside a Union player for a match at Subaru Park as a middle schooler. Dirks is hoping she can return to the field for the WLL championship, this time as the professional athlete.

“I walked a player out when I was in, I think it was fifth or sixth grade,” Dirks said. “And I was just looking up at him, at this professional soccer player. And now, to think I’m a professional is pretty insane.”

Dirks, a midfielder for the Maryland Charm, also has a few teammates who have some extra motivation to make it to the league’s first championship game.

Sam Swart, a Villanova native who played midfield at Archbishop Carroll and Syracuse, used to play club tournaments for Phantastix Lacrosse, another elite club program in the area, at the fields around Subaru Park.

“It’s so funny how the world just makes a full-circle moment,” Swart said. “You never think you’d be on the biggest stage, and the biggest stage is your home. … I think being here in the Philadelphia area is the greatest thing in the world, because Philly has the best people.”

McKenzie Blake said the number of Philadelphia connections within the league speaks volumes about how much women’s lacrosse has grown in the area. Blake, a Haddonfield native, played under Magarity at HHH and is an attacker for the Charm.

“It shows the progress that the area has made as a whole,” Blake said. “It also puts Philly on the map as one of those hotbeds of lacrosse for girls looking up. Young girls, when I meet them now in Haddonfield, it’s not like they’re playing soccer and these sports anymore. Lacrosse is their main sport, which is super exciting to see.”