On Wednesday, the Paly girls and boys lacrosse teams met on the field after school and played their final game of the season… against each other. The official season for the boys ended May 12th with their game against Menlo School, and the girl’s season ended May 5th when they played Mountain View, the Vikes got together for a final game to support a good cause.

The lacrosse teams played the game against each other to bring awareness to the mission of Paly’s Bring Change to Mind club (BC2M). BC2M has a large membership at Paly, with many of the members playing on the lacrosse team.

“It was a really fun game and it was super cool to see everyone really get into it and just have tons of fun,” said sophomore Katie Yen, who plays on the varsity team and is also an active member of BC2M.

BC2M’s goal is to spark more conversation and action regarding mental health issues. At, Paly, where many students suffer mental health issues due to academic and social stress, the members of BC2M believe it is crucial to foster an environment where communication and dialogue regarding mental health is encouraged and supported.

“It’s really an important cause and I was glad to get to do a big event around it,” said Yen. “It was our first big event for BC2M in a really long time, especially because of Covid.”

The game also was a good way to attract new members to BC2M.

“The game was super fun with a big crowd of supporters for the BC2M club,” said Eliza Gaither (24) on the girls team and member of BC2M. “It was good to help get more members, especially boys, which is a demographic that the club is lacking.”

Because girls and boys lacrosse has slightly different rules and equipment, to even the playing field,  the two teams swapped sticks for the game, and they played by the rules for the girl’s game. Along with this, some members of the boys team wore traditionally feminine clothes like skirts, and some of the girls donned more masculine clothes to discourage stigma around clothing. Other players wore custom Paly lacrosse jerseys that read ‘BC2M’ across the back, or another custom jersey which read ‘Stick it to Stigma’ across the front, which is the BC2M slogan, with crossing lacrosse sticks.

Technically, the boys scored more points at the end of the game, but at the closing of the fourth quarter, it was declared that whoever scored the last point would win, and the girls pulled off the last point, winning the game.

Members of both BC2M and the lacrosse teams were happy with the outcome of the event overall.

“It took a lot of planning, especially since we made custom jerseys,” said Yen. “But the game was tons of fun and we all had a really good time. It was a great way to send our seniors off.”

The message of BC2M is hugely important at Paly and everywhere, and celebrating ‘sticking it to stigma’ with a fun game of lacrosse is a great way to start summer.