A Chance to Evaluate, Improve at U.S. Women's Sixes Camp

SPARKS, Md. — Lindsey Munday is still learning. Even after spending 14 seasons leading a USC program that made waves in college lacrosse, Munday is taking it all in. Sixes is just an entirely different animal.

At a sixes training camp last week at USA Lacrosse headquarters, Munday and assistant coach Michelle Tumolo put the invited players through the wringer. Over several intense, 90-minute practice sessions spread across five days, the coaching staff made sure to be efficient with its time while evaluating the fastest version of the fastest sport on two feet.

“You continue to learn about sixes every single time you step on the field,” Munday said. “There are some things that we’re working through in terms of the advantages we want to create, both through live play and through the data that we’re getting from games.”

Everything was calculated. Drills had a clear start time and end time. The roster was split into teams, and score was kept most of the time, too — anything to simulate pressure situations and how players must be “scorers, not just shooters.”

To mimic how sixes requires play in tight spaces, some drills called for splitting the field in half (from the endline to the midfield) to encourage players to improve in the two-man game in a tight window.

“These reps are so intense,” Munday said. “You don’t need to do a drill for 20 minutes when you’re playing with the best players in the world.”

With the World Lacrosse Women’s Championship and international field lacrosse in the rearview for now, it’s fully time for the women’s program to embrace sixes — and there are three events remaining this year to show it off.

The 2026 Pan-American Sixes Lacrosse Championships will take place from Sept. 29-Oct. 4 in Oshawa, Canada. Less than a month later, USA Lacrosse will host the second Atlas Cup from Oct. 23-25. To close 2026, the PLL and WLL will host the first-ever Global Lacrosse Games from Dec. 8-13 at The St. James in Springfield, Va.

With so much on the horizon, Munday set the tone for camp early.

“They’re all stepping up to the challenge,” she said. “That was the message going into this camp: ‘We’re going to ask you to get out of your comfort zone.’”

FIRST USA CAP

Training camp was filled with firsts for Stony Brook midfielder Isabella Caporuscio.

A second-team All-American last spring, Caporuscio is a strong dodger and finisher. She’s gritty on ground balls and is a burner in the open field — all seemingly beneficial traits of a sixes player. But she’d never played sixes before camp —and she’d never worn a USA jersey, either.

“At the end of the day, I’m here to learn and I’m here to grow,” Caporuscio said. “This is my first go at it. I came in here completely blind, not really knowing what to expect. It’s a completely different game than I’m used to, but it’s a lot of fun.”

Caporuscio acquitted herself well, making eye-opening plays like a chase-down trail check of Brigid Duffy in transition and later turning a ground ball near the crease into a bar-down, shovel shot goal in traffic.

“At first, I was a little confused on what to do,” she said. “It felt like I was running in circles. But as we’ve gone through the week, I’ve gotten the hang of it.”

Lacey Downey (Johns Hopkins) and Aditi Foster (Northwestern) also made their USA debuts, as did several others, all of whom made noise during the five-day session.

PROTECT YOUR NET

Think sixes is all about offense? You’d be remiss to not consider how much a goalie can impact the outcome of a game.

Munday welcomed three goalies to training camp — Jenika Cuocco, Taylor Moreno and JJ Suriano — and each showed why the goalie might just be the most valuable position on the field.

“After playing this week, the goalie, in my opinion, is the most important part of sixes,” Caporuscio said.

The three in camp already have a fair amount of hardware. Cuocco won an NCAA championship with Northwestern in May, and Suriano was the IWLCA’s 2026 national goalie of the year.

Moreno is the most decorated as the veteran of the group. She’s an NCAA champion (2022) and graduated from North Carolina as the program leader in saves (667) and goalie wins (70). She was also one of two netminders, along with Shea Dolce, to win a gold medal with the United States at The World Games in 2025 in Chengdu, China.

“The goalies are our X-factor. They’re phenomenal,” Munday said. “When you can get stops and get off to the races like we can, that’s how you stretch these games.”

TIME TO EVALUATE

This training camp didn’t feature some household names lacrosse fans have come to associate with U.S. women’s teams. Just rattling off names from the 2025 The World Games roster that won gold, Dolce, Sam Apuzzo, Chloe Humphrey, Kenzie Kent, Ellie Masera, Marie McCool, Charlotte North and Cassidy Weeks weren’t present. (North, of course, is recovering from an Achilles injury.)

There are others, too, who could be in the mix for competition teams. But sixes is intense, and this summer has been filled with events. In many cases, omissions from camp were simply an opportunity to get players a break.

“We’ve all wanted more, and we’ve gotten more,” Munday said. “These are incredible opportunities for these athletes. But we also have to be mindful of their bodies, of making sure they’re getting rest. … Choosing these rosters is hard, so the more we can evaluate, the better.”

Giving new faces, like Caporuscio and others, a look allows for Munday to assess new talents and even opens the door for those players to force their way onto competition teams with strong performances.

It also builds the pipeline, which will prove invaluable as sixes continues to take on a more prominent role with the LA28 Olympics approaching.