Taylor Poplawski was too small. She couldn’t play lacrosse. She wouldn’t be good at it, people told her throughout her childhood.

Though Poplawski, a fourth-grader at the time, didn’t even know what lacrosse was, she wanted to play.

“I was like, ‘You know what? Screw you guys, I’m going to play anyway,’” Poplawski said. “… It lit a fire under my seat. I just wanted to show them all wrong.”

Poplawski is only 5 feet, 2 inches, but has used a tough and aggressive playing style to succeed on the lacrosse field. She won two state championships during high school and now plays on the second-line midfield for No. 9 Syracuse (9-6, 2-4 Atlantic Coast).

During starting midfielder Kelly Cross’ suspension, Poplawski has expanded her role beyond just a second-line midfielder. In the last three games, she’s picked up three draw controls and three ground balls and on the season, she’s recorded six goals after switching from the attack last season.

“She’s super athletic, super quick, great on ground balls,” SU head coach Gary Gait said. “(She’s a) hustler.”

Poplawski was not a typical little girl, her stepfather, John Poplawski said. She liked climbing trees, playing with snakes and getting dirty.

When Poplawski started playing soccer, she was better than the boys.

“I’d always be like, ‘Oh, she’s so aggressive no one’s going to like her,’” said Tina Poplawski, her mother.

But her stepfather embraced the aggressiveness. He and Poplawski wrestled in the living room or yard from when she was 4 until she was 10 or 11 years old.

In gym class, she was sometimes too aggressive, knocking kids down while pegging classmates with the kickball. Though she’d get in trouble with her teacher, her stepfather contested that there was no such thing as being too aggressive.

Poplawski saw a flier for the lacrosse team in fourth grade and told her parents she wanted to play. She showed up to her first lacrosse practice with a men’s stick, pads and a helmet, that her stepfather had borrowed from the coach at the school he worked at. The coach didn’t realize Poplawski was a girl, not a boy.

“‘She’s a very natural player, but she’ll need a girls’ stick,” Tina Poplawski recalls Poplawski’s first coach saying.

When Poplawski started playing lacrosse, John Poplawski learned how to play too, and soon became her coach.

He’d line the yard with Pepsi bottles and make Poplawski weave through them while his 6-foot-3, 350-pound frame pushed against her. Tina Poplawski would yell at her husband that he was being too rough and was going to hurt Poplawski.

“You have to play big, you’re little,” Tina Poplawski remembers her husband telling her daughter.

Tough and aggressive were characteristics of Poplawski’s playing style. Bruises were like trophies to her, John Poplawski said.

On the lacrosse field, the aggressiveness meant dodging past bigger players so much so that he would move her back to defense when the games got out of hand.

Poplawski led Christian Brothers (New York) Academy to two state championships during her sophomore and senior years, earning championship most valuable player each time.

At Syracuse, Poplawski has focused on gaining as much muscle weight as she can as another way to go up against bigger competition.

“I try and bulk up so I’m not like a paperweight out there,” Poplawski said.

Her strength and aggressiveness have combined to help her get to ground balls and draw controls from bigger players.

Though she’s had success at Syracuse, Gait doesn’t think she’s reached her peak. The on-field effects produced by her aggressiveness and toughness will be crucial as the Orange — which has lost four of its last five games — approaches the end of its season.

“Her best lacrosse is yet to come I think,” he said. “I’m excited about that.”

Published on April 14, 2015 at 9:38 pm

Contact Jon: [email protected] | @jmettus