St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes junior Chaelynn Hwang got the opportunity of a lifetime in January for a week to play in the Asia-Pacific Women’s Lacrosse Tournament! She spent the summer training with her Korea lacrosse team and made fantastic memories along the way.
The tournament was organized by the Asia Pacific Lacrosse Union (APLU) and consisted of national women’s lacrosse teams from the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, and many others. The tournament took place in Australia, where all teams competed to win the title during high level competition and tension worthy games. The Voice interviewed Chaelynn and asked about her experience playing lacrosse overseas. She described her lengthy tryout process as difficult because it was hard to get in contact with the coaches and directors of the Korean national team. Once she finally got in contact, she flew out to Korea to meet the team and practice for a month over the summer. Despite the many highlight videos of herself she had previously sent over, the coaches really wanted to see Chaelynn play live.
“I practiced with the team and went to their training camp,” she said, “so that’s what I did over the summer.”
Chaelynn explained that the team had been practicing since March of last year for this past tournament in January. The Korean national coaches didn’t release the team’s final roster until November 2024, and that’s also when the coaches told everyone to come out to Korea to officially practice with the team. Chaelynn was very excited about making the team because her father and uncle also played for Korea’s national lacrosse team 20 years ago, and she felt like it was a big honor to know that she would be “following in the steps of her family members.”
Chaelynn also felt nervous about playing with a whole new team in a whole new environment, but her teammates were all very sweet and welcoming throughout her tryout process and when she officially made the team. She did have to adjust to the Korean team’s lacrosse playing style while also having to communicate in Korean during practices and games, which was challenging at first for Chaelynn when she started trying out for the team.
When asked about the competition level, Chaelynn said it was vastly different in Korea than in the U.S; “Lacrosse isn’t big in Korea, so the team’s skill level wasn’t good at all. But at the tournament, the competition from other countries was really high, and it felt like I was in a club team game.”
Due to the competition level of other teams, the Korean national team had lost many challenging games. Regardless, everyone was coming into the tournament with one overall goal to play together and represent Korea the best they could.
After returning back to the U.S., Chaelynn is still in close contact with her teammates that reside in Korea. “I especially keep in contact with some of the girls overseas that I’m closer in age with, and I hope I can visit Korea again and meet up with them.”
Some fond memories Chaelynn shared about her overall experience were the team dinners, daily practices and post practice ice baths.
“It was the common goal of everyone playing for Korea that brought us all together.”
