She agreed to try her hand at lacrosse, but Husson University freshman Kristen Capen quickly realized it was her feet that would be most affected.
The longtime field hockey player from Leeds decided to go out for Husson’s women’s lacrosse team at the invitation of lacrosse head coach Mark Hundhammer.
“Since I’m a field hockey goalie, I’ve been used to using my feet a lot to stop a lot of shots,” said Capen, whose only exposure to lacrosse before this spring was for one quarter in a high school physical education class. “I would kick it, and whenever I did, it hurt.”
A lacrosse ball weighs only about five ounces, but when it’s coming in at a speed much faster than field hockey sticks can generate, sometimes it really hurts.
“One time, it made my entire foot go numb,” Capen recalled.
Still, Capen was willing to take the punishment and bear the pain. Husson assistant coach Sarah Worcester, however, wasn’t willing to let her.
“Her feet were taking a beating and she was sore, so I was concerned about her,” Worcester said. “So while we were scouting some teams in Portland, I checked out an athletic specialty store for some kind of padding or specialized shoes, but they didn’t have anything.”
They did have something that caught her eye and — more importantly — gave her an idea.
“I found some [throat guard] pads made for football helmets, took them home, got some elastic and Velcro, and got my sewing machine out,” Worcester explained. “I sewed on elastic and Velcro to make adjustable sneaker pads and used the very top button attachment on the pads to secure them along with the Velcro and elas-tic.”
Worcester was especially mindful of Capen’s desire not to be bogged down with heavy protective equipment that would restrict her movement and/or weigh her down.
“I wanted her to feel comfortable and also still be able to move around freely,” she said. “She doesn’t want to wear anything that affects her mobility and molded it so it would go just on her sneaker.”
Worcester was able to customize the padding on her own shoes since she and Capen wear the same size.
“The padding goes all the way around and on top of the shoe, and it’s all secured by Velcro straps which go around and across.”
Once Worcester felt she‘d perfected her design, she still needed to give it a test run. That’s where 15-year-old son Jacob came in.
“My son was the guinea pig,” she said. “He tried them out, kicking the soccer ball around the yard and said they felt fine.”
That left one final test, but it took a little convincing on Worcester’s part as Capen was skeptical about even trying them out.
“I don’t wear knee pads because I can’t really move around very well with them on,” Capen said. “When she first showed them to me, I didn’t really want to try them, but she kept pushing me to try, and I eventually did.”
Capen wore them in a scrimmage against the University of Maine, but she never faced any shots. Then came the season opener against Becker College, but still no real shots.
“The next time of practice, I was getting hammered at my feet and I couldn’t even feel the shots,” Capen said. “They didn’t bother me at all and I liked it, so I kept them. I can’t even feel them on there. They’re so lightweight.”
Capen is certainly playing well with them. She has played in five of Husson’s first six games, starting one. She has saved 34 of 66 total shots for a .515 save percentage and was named the North Atlantic Conference rookie of the week Wednesday.
“She never played until three or four weeks ago, but she’s been awesome for us,” said Hundhammer. “She’s been spirited from day one, ready to play, and dynamic.”
Don’t forget hardy.
“It was making me tough because of all the bruises I’m getting, but lately they’ve been healing,” Capen said.
Thanks to a first-year assistant coach and an invention for which she just might want to get a trademark.
“Everybody’s telling me that,” Worcester said. “We searched everywhere and couldn’t find anything to help her, so I made something.”