Harper Hood is a standout goalie from the ADVNC North Bay & NDP 2027 team committed to play at Rochester Institute of Technology, starting next Fall.
Harper grew up in Truckee, CA, in the Lake Tahoe area. “I never really knew what lacrosse was when I was little,” Harper said. “But when I was seven years old, I started seeing a lot of boys my age playing around with lacrosse sticks, and I wanted to play. I soon learned there were no leagues or teams for girls my age around Truckee. Girls lacrosse didn’t start until middle school. I wanted to start a team for me and my friends.”
Harper’s dad, Randy Hood, grew up in Southern California and had no background at all in lacrosse. Her mom, Kristi Hood, however is from upstate New York, and graduated from Ithaca College. “I knew about the sport,” Kristi said. “But I didn’t play. When Harper started asking if she could play, I didn’t even know where to begin!”
Harper got a group of her friends together, and formed an 8U team. But they had to play with the middle school girls!
“It was really fun to play with those older girls,” Harper said. “Learning how to catch and scoop ground balls. Everyone was super welcoming. It was a very family-like environment. I just liked learning this new sport and being with my friends.”
“It was pretty amazing to watch my 7 year old daughter take that initiative and organize a team like that,” Randy Hood said. “That’s pretty rare for a kid her age at that time. But she had a lot of fun with it right away. It was really cool to see.”
“After a couple of years, I started coaching her team,” Kristi Hood said. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but myself along with another of the player’s moms decided to coach them. It was crazy to see these really young girls playing with middle schoolers. But they learned quickly and got a lot better.”
In those early years, Harper played a variety of positions. But being the coach’s daughter, she got thrown into playing goalie, pretty much every game.
“It was kind of like, my mom threw me to the wolves!” Harper said. “Nobody else really wanted to play goalie. Plus, I was never the biggest fan of running! So my mom said goalie was the perfect position for a player who doesn’t like running. So I would play goalie for parts of every game. Eventually I decided that goalie was just my position and I started playing it full time.”
Even after deciding that goalie was going to be her position on the lacrosse team, Harper struggled with the mental side of the position.
“Things started to feel more serious to me when I was about 14 years old. I wanted to play in High School. And I got asked to play on a travel team in the Truckee area. But playing goalie was hard on me. I thought I had to make every save. It was really hard for me to accept that it was OK sometimes to let a goal in. My freshman season of high school was really rough. I wanted to quit lacrosse.”
“I looked up all the goalie stats for the best DI college players,” Randy Hood said. “I showed Harper how the very best goalies’ save percentage is about 50%. Some of the DI goalies were only saving around 30% of the shots they saw. I tried to help her understand that she didn’t need to try and be perfect.”
“I started to try and believe the saying that I needed to be like a gold fish,” Harper said. “Gold fish only remember things for 3 seconds. So when I let a goal in, I tried to forget about it right away, and move on to the next play. But I was really taxing myself mentally, and I was taxing my teammates as well. I was bringing everyone on my team down.”
“She slowly started to improve the mental side of her game, and her attitude in general towards lacrosse,” Kristi Hood said. “Her growth over the last few years has been really fun to watch. She used to get so frustrated. But she has really come into her own gradually, and she’s so focused now. She has a great field IQ.”
Harper, along with a group of 2027 players from Truckee and other parts of Nevada all decided to start playing for ADVNC when they were sophomores.
“My friend from growing up who’s still my good friend now in high school, Daisy Melen, along with some other girls from our area all went down to Marin to try out for ADVNC,” Harper said. “I thought I had a terrible tryout. But the coaches saw something in me, and invited me to the ADVNC team. I loved all the girls I met at the tryout. I was really excited to try a new team. I loved ADVNC from the very first day.
“Making that ADVNC team was the key turning point for Harper,” said Kristi Hood. “That really helped light the fire back up for her in terms of stoking her love of lacrosse and of playing goalie. It was really awesome to see.”
It was a long drive for Harper and her teammates from Truckee to Marin for practices. But it was a sacrifice she felt would be worth it. “When I joined ADVNC, I had no thoughts of playing lacrosse in college,” Harper said. “But then, when I had played for ADVNC for a short time, I saw a path to where I might actually be able to play in college. It really opened that door for me. I started to believe I was good enough. I also just loved my teammates and coaches. Everything about ADVNC was a family vibe that I had been looking for since I first started playing lacrosse. The friends I made through ADVNVC are now some of my very best friends.”
Harper playing on her Truckee High School team.
With her eyes now set on playing in college, Harper and her parents leaned on ADVNC Girls Director Brooke Eubanks and her ADVNC coaches. “I started having recruiting calls with Brooke,” Harper said. “She would walk me through everything I needed to do. It was a lot to do, but I wanted to see if I could actually play in college. Brooke helped me a ton.”
“Harper really drove the whole process outside of mine and Randy’s influence,” Kristi Hood said. “And Coach Brooke was super helpful. With her background coaching in college, she really helped Harper a lot. She was also a great sounding board for Randy and I. She was awesome.”
As Harper dove into the recruiting process, she got an offer from a DII school that she really liked. But she didn’t want to commit right away. One day, she was checking the IWLCA recruiting message board, and saw that Rochester Institute of Technology was looking for a 2027 goalie. So she reached out to the coaches. “I asked their coaches to come watch me play at an upcoming NDP Tournament,” Harper said. “After they saw me play, they reached out and I had a great call with Head Coach Erin Wagner. We had a great call, and I thought Coach Wagner was super cool. Shortly after that, we scheduled a two week trip to visit 11 different schools.”
RIT was the 3rd of the 11 schools Harper visited. On her visit to RIT, she stayed with the team overnight. “I really liked the girls on the team. They were all so welcoming. The next morning, before I left campus, Coach Wagner offered me a spot on the team. But I still had 8 more schools to visit. So I put that offer on hold.”
Harper completed the 11 school trip and returned home, now with the DII offer and the RIT offer in hand.
“It was a nerve wracking decision,” Harper said. “I was worried I was going to make the wrong choice. I had till February 28th to let the DII school know of my decision on their offer. So on February 28th, I committed to RIT. RIT just felt like home for me. They have great coaches, and I loved the other girls on the team. They have a great business school, and I’m planning on studying business. So I committed to RIT, and I’m just thrilled with my decision.”
“I could just tell that Harper felt right at home at RIT,” Kristi said. “And for her to go to college in upstate New York like I did is really cool. It just seems like a great fit, and I’m super happy for her.”
“Through the whole process, I told Harper to just focus on where you think you’re gonna get the best education, and where you think you’ll have the most fun both on the lacrosse team, and as a student,” Randy Hood said. “I think she was a little more passionate about RIT. I think she made a great choice.”
With the process behind them, the Hood’s have this advice for parents with kids who want to play lacrosse in college. “My biggest thing is, let your kids make their own decisions,” Kristi Hood said. “We would try to guide her at times, but we never wanted her to feel like she was being pushed to do anything. So let your child guide their own path, and just be there to support them.”
“I handled the logistics of everything,” Randy Hood said. “But Harper made every decision. I made sure to figure out how to get to and from tournaments and practices. I got rental cars and hotels. But this whole journey was driven by Harper. It has to be driven by the player.”
Harper has this advice for young players who have big dreams. “Don’t burn yourself out. That’s why I kept playing basketball and tennis alongside lacrosse. I just love sports and I like being with my friends. Maintaining your love for sports is super important. But don’t let yourself get to a point where you don’t like lacrosse any more. Take breaks. Then come back to lacrosse, or whatever your #1 sport is. Just don’t lose the passion and love for the sport.”