Home Sweet Home: California Palms Host New York Charging in First SoCal Showdown

SAN DIEGO — The California Palms are finally bringing professional women's lacrosse home. After splitting their first two regular-season games on the road, the Women’s Lacrosse League's (WLL) only West Coast franchise will play its first-ever home game in California this Saturday, June 27, at 8 p.m. at the University of San Diego, and they're doing it against the league's lone unbeaten team, the New York Charging.

It's a rematch with weight behind it. The Palms fell to the Charging in the final of the 2026 WLL Championship Series back in February, and both Ally Mastroianni and head coach Maddy Buss made it clear this week that they haven't forgotten. Tickets are on sale now, and fans who can't make it to USD can catch the game on ESPN+ or follow along at thewll.com.

The WLL is in its first regular season, playing a 10v10 format across just four teams: the Maryland Charm, the Charging, Boston Guard, and the Palms. Before this year, the four clubs squared off only in the WLL Championship Series, an out-of-season tournament played in the Sixes format, the same format set to make its debut at the LA28 Olympics.

Heading into this weekend's slate, the standings read: New York Charging (2-0), California Palms (1-1), Maryland Charm (1-1), Boston Guard (0-2). The Palms lost their first regular season game against Maryland 17-18, but didn’t let that slow them down as they beat Boston 17-15. Now, they’ve got to prove themselves against a team that’s yet to lose.

Small as the league is right now, both Mastroianni and Buss see it as the opening chapter of something much bigger. "It's only gonna get bigger and expand and create more opportunities for more people to be able to say that they are a professional lacrosse player," Mastroianni said. "It makes each game that much more important to win and to really put your team in a good position for playoffs this first season."

Before the Palms ever played a real regular-season game, they were already a team. California's first professional women's lacrosse team, born out of the WLL Championship Series tournaments in 2025 and 2026, existed long before the league had an official regular season to call its own. That head start is paying off now, and both the team's coach and its captain credit it for the chemistry already on display.

Buss has watched the roster's identity solidify even as new names have joined the mix. "It felt like Marie has been on our team for years, but she just got here in the summer too," she said, referring to midfielder Marie McCool. "It's been awesome to build around the original core group that was in the past two years." That core includes Mastroianni, goalie Taylor Moreno, defender Emily Nalls, and attacker Sam Geiersbach, all of whom won a national championship together at North Carolina in 2022, with McCool serving as an assistant coach on that very UNC squad.

For Buss, building the Palms' identity has been less about scheme and more about culture. "This is how the California Palms operate," she said. "If you're a Palm, we're trying to have fun, but win, and just push our identity." The players have their own shorthand for it, too. "We're the pretty in pink," Buss said.

Mastroianni has felt that culture take shape from inside the locker room as the team's captain. "There's only so many roster spots, so it's definitely an honor to be able to represent the WLL and one of the four teams specifically, the California Palms," she said. "But I think we all know this is only the start."

For Mastroianni, the road to professional lacrosse started in her own backyard in New Jersey, tagging along with her older brother and his teammates. But the moment it became a real dream, she said, was watching North Carolina beat Maryland in five overtimes at the 2015 national championship. "It was that moment, seeing all the confetti and the excitement and just that high level of lacrosse, that I was like, ‘you know what, this is what I wanna do,’" she said.

That same feeling of being part of something historic followed her into the WLL's own launch. Mastroianni still lights up describing it. "Starting with the announcement in Times Square, as well as in NASDAQ, that was really cool to be a part of," she said. "Just being a part of the SportsCenter announcement and all the exciting things that have happened in the last year or two to get the league on the move and on the up has been really cool to be a part of."

That dream led her to UNC, then to the WLL, and now, as the Palms' captain, she's embracing the responsibility of representing California on a roster of just four teams. "I definitely felt honored to represent the West Coast," she said. "A huge part of what I do and what I'm passionate about is growing the game of lacrosse to nontraditional areas, both in the US and internationally, so I often find myself out west running clinics. I guess it was kind of fitting that California was my team."

And the fans are noticing. "I think they're just growing, they're getting bigger and bigger at every game," she said. "I feel like there's more kids in the stands wearing our uniform, which is really, really cool to see."

Mastroianni is coming off a standout performance against Boston, where she scored four goals and an assist, including the game-winner. But Saturday's matchup against New York carries its own motivation. "We lost in New York in the Champ series back in February, so definitely looking for some revenge there," she said. "We're just really excited to play and continue to show Palm lacrosse."

Mastroianni also used the moment to spotlight some off-the-field work: this weekend, she and several Palms teammates are partnering with the Callum and Jake Robinson Foundation and PLL Assist to run a free girls' lacrosse clinic for all skill levels. The foundation, based largely in San Diego, also organizes beach cleanups and other community initiatives. Mastroianni states that she and some of her Palms teammates will be hosting a youth lacrosse clinic with the foundation this Monday. Get more information about that on their website: https://www.cjrfoundation.com/

If Mastroianni represents the on-field continuity from the Championship Series, Buss represents the connective tissue behind the league itself. A Duke alum who helped lead the Blue Devils to four straight NCAA quarterfinal appearances, Buss built her coaching résumé from the ground up in Southern California by running LA Select, South Bay Lacrosse Club, and Mira Costa Girls Lacrosse, the program that earned her 2025 USA Lacrosse Coach of the Year honors.

Buss's road to the WLL started years before the league had an official roster, through previous lacrosse ties back to upstate New York and a partnership that grew out of her South Bay youth club. One moment from that early stretch still amazes her. "One of my players, her dad actually became chief marketing officer of the PLL, Tom Brady [no, not that one], and he got our team involved with the announcement," Buss said. "We were the big commercial where Charlotte is saying 'it's our time,' and all those little girls are our players." Buss still remembers watching her own sixth-graders broadcast across Times Square. "It was so amazing, it was so cool to see them in Times Square. It was a dream," she said. Those same girls are heading into their freshman year of high school now, a small reminder of how fast the league's earliest moments have already become history.

From there, the path turned more formal with a full vetting process with WLL officials Rachel DeCecco and Seth Tierney once the league's summer season was announced. "I think they saw the value of me being in California growing lacrosse, and kind of what that means for the sport," she said.

Now in her first season as the Palms' regular-season head coach after leading the team through the Championship Series, Buss has leaned into her strengths as a culture-builder rather than a detail-obsessive tactician. "You have to empower the players to buy in in a very short amount of time — get them to like each other, work well together, and create a team culture really quickly," she said. She's measured the season's emotional arc in college terms: the opener felt like dusting off cobwebs, the second game like a conference championship, and this weekend, she said, "feels like a semifinal of the Final Four."

Buss has also watched lacrosse's West Coast footprint shift firsthand, long before she was coaching pros. "My mom lived in Washington state, and I would come out and do wall ball at the local YMCA, and people would come up to me like, 'What is that stick? What is that? Are you playing tennis?'" she said. "They had just never heard of it. Now Portland, Oregon, and the Seattle area are huge with lacrosse." That shift, in her view, has come from a mix of forces: some helpful, some unexpected. "COVID was actually helpful for us, because you don't have to touch the same equipment," she said. "We had some of our biggest growth after COVID, because everyone was trying something. They just wanted to get out of the house." Flag football's sudden rise complicated that momentum for a stretch, she said, but the WLL and PLL's growing visibility, plus lacrosse's Olympic debut on the horizon at LA28, has helped the sport reclaim ground. She also pointed to the deepening bench of West Coast college programs — USC, Colorado, Denver, Arizona State, San Diego State, UC Davis, and Stanford among them — as proof the talent pipeline now runs in both directions. Buss is still waiting for the day a player on her own roster can claim California as a hometown rather than an adopted one. "Once I have a true California kid on our team, born and bred, whether it's San Diego, LA, or NorCal, I'll be like, holy cow, we've truly come full circle here," she said.

Both women see their place in the WLL as part of something bigger than this season's standings. "I think it's an amazing time to be a girl in sports, to be a woman in sports," Mastroianni said. "There's just so much momentum, more visibility, more access to playing sports, more opportunity to play at higher levels. I think it's giving kids bigger things to dream of, and they have all these role models they can see and aspire to be like." She's seen it play out directly in the clinics she runs around the state: "Every time I go to California, these girls are just so excited to learn, and they're so grateful for the opportunity. Each time I come back, they improve so much. It just shows that with access and visibility, girls can dream and accomplish anything."

Buss feels that same momentum from a slightly different vantage point these days, regularly crossing paths with athletes she once only watched from a distance. "I get more starstruck from the athletes I see than almost anything," she said, recalling a memorable run-in with U.S. soccer legend Megan Rapinoe at dinner. "I almost lost it. I was like, we have to go, we have to go, I can't stay here." (Fellow soccer great Abby Wambach, she added, lives just down the street.) For Buss, moments like that drive home why visibility matters so much for the next generation. "It's so important for young girls to have dreams and look up to their role models," she said. "Growing up, my role models were the Powells — Casey and Mikey — and that's great, but being able to have an actual female to look up to is just so awesome."

Both Mastroianni and Buss made it clear this game means something beyond the standings. It’s a true homecoming for the West Coast's only professional women's lacrosse team, against the one opponent still standing between the Palms and the top of the table. Mastroianni is confident that there’s nothing else like it: “Come to our game or watch it on TV and see it for yourself. Truly, when it’s played at the highest level, what you’ll see with the PLL and the WLL is one of the most beautiful things to watch. If you’ve never seen the sport before you’ll be very impressed and you’ll fall in love with it.” And win or lose, Buss promises the personality won't change. "What you see on Instagram is what we truly are like in the locker room — so much fun," she said. The team even has its own mascot of sorts: a Barbie doll the players have nicknamed Palmala. "Please be a Palms fan," Buss said. "We think of our fans as family, and we wouldn't be where we are without them."

Kickoff is set for 8 p.m. Saturday at the University of San Diego. Tickets are on sale now, and the game streams live on ESPN+ and thewll.com.

Top photo credit: WLL/thewll.com