'At Every Level We Are Seeing Exponential Growth': Taylor Cummings On Athletes Unlimited Lacrosse
(CBS Local Sports)--The last weekend of competition in the new Athletes Unlimited Lacrosse league begins Friday night on CBS Sports Network and there hasn't been a better player in the league than Taylor Cummings. The former University of Maryland star and 2x national champion has racked up 1,507 points in 12 games thanks to her excellent individual performances and presence on several winning teams over the past few weeks.
CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith caught up with Cummings to discuss what it has been like to play in this new professional women's lacrosse league, how she has built her Taylor Cummings Lacrosse business off the field and the future of the sport in America and around the world. Team Cummings battles Team Ohlmiller at 5pm EST/PST on CBS Sports Network on Friday.
"It's been a lot of fun to play with teammates old and new," said Cummings. "It's been really great to meet a lot of new people, play with different people every week and have our games streamed on TV. One of the biggest surprises was how easy it was to gel with new people each week. In college, you work with a lot of the same people for four years and it takes a while to build that chemistry, but here that chemistry is building really quickly."
"My big focus is to help my teams win and that's what my focus has been since I started playing team sports when I was six years old," said Cummings. "From that regard, it feels really natural and the individual side of this is a little different in that only one champion is crowned in the end. I just try to focus on whatever I can do individually to help my team win and wherever I fall on the leaderboard each week, that's just how it plays out."
The 27-year-old Cummings is considered by many to be the face of women's lacrosse in America. The midfielder led the University of Maryland to consecutive national championships in 2014 and 2015 and has a thriving business of the field called Taylor Cummings Lacrosse where she coaches and gives girls lessons. Cummings is really encouraged by the growth of the sport and the future of lacrosse.
"When I started it was very much an east coast dominated sport. You basically played in Maryland and New York and that was it," said Cummings. "To see lacrosse grow across the country and the world, to see lacrosse get in the Olympics, to having new renditions of new male and female professional lacrosse, that's really exciting for our sport. It shows that the interest is there. Teams will continue to be built at the college level, high school level and club scenes. I think at every level we are seeing exponential growth. It can only mean good things for the male and female versions of our sport in the future."