Quad Champs

WASA Eagles Win Fourth Straight WLUSA National Title

The Wisconsin Adaptive Sports Association (WASA) Eagles are national champions again. For the fourth year in a row, the WASA wheelchair lacrosse program captured the Wheelchair Lacrosse USA (WLUSA) Nationals title.

“I’m calling us the quad champs,” said Sarah Sherman, an offensive player for WASA, after the win. “That’s more creative than, um—” she laughed. It’s a nod to both the four-peat and the sport itself.

During this year’s two-day tournament at Buffalo RiverWorks in Buffalo, N.Y., WASA won all five of its tournament games and defeated the Northeast Passage Wildcats, 2-0, in Saturday’s WLUSA national championship to claim the 2026 title.

“I’m calling us the quad champs. That’s more creative than, um —” she laughed.

It’s a nod to both the four-peat and the sport itself.

Ten Years of the Program

Sherman has been with WASA for most of its 10-year history and remembers the seasons before this run of titles.

“It’s a good feeling knowing where we started 10 years ago,” she says. “I wasn’t even in the first year. So, coming back from being on the losing side all the time to winning four in a row — we’ve had some amazing coaches, and some of them are also professionals in their own right.”

One of those coaches, Mason Woodward, serves as defensive coordinator for Marquette University’s wheelchair lacrosse program. Sherman pointed to the coaching staff’s consistency as a factor in the team’s growth.

“The team has become more of a core group over the last couple of years, and I think that consistency helps a lot,” she says. “Just the team’s growth and the sport’s growth as a whole over the last 10 years has been awesome to watch.”

A Season of Progress

Sherman’s own season followed a similar arc. She lives with Sydenham chorea, a post-strep autoimmune disorder — essentially the same underlying condition as rheumatic fever, she explains, but one that affects movement instead of the heart.

“I walk funny,” she says. “It’s like the Ministry of Silly Walks from Monty Python.”

She started the season recovering from a whiplash injury and spent the first three months working one-on-one with coaching staff on fundamentals.

“Just passing and catching,” she says. “That made a huge difference — just awareness, and someone to pass with instead of just a brick wall.”

Sherman came up through the program as a defensive player.

“I knew I was making it as a defensive player when the other team started swearing at me, telling me to get out of the way,” she says.

This season, she moved to offense and scored four goals over the weekend. For the full season, that put her at eight goals total, seven more than any previous year.

Asked whether the team was already talking about a fifth straight title, Sherman didn’t hesitate.

“We’re gonna get five,” she says. “The more we win, the larger targets we have on our back, and the bigger the targets on our back, the harder it is. So we just have to prep that much more.”

Tourney Recap

Twelve teams split into three pools of four at Buffalo RiverWorks for Friday’s opening pool play round, with every team playing three games. Three teams went undefeated:

• WASA Eagles (Pool A) went 3-0, outscoring opponents 22-1.
• Houston Apollos (Pool B) went 3-0,  outscoring opponents 15-6.
• Northeast Passage Wildcats (Pool C) went 3-0, outscoring opponents 16-6.

But nobody else came close enough to WASA’s scoring margin.

Seeding for Saturday’s bracket came down to a tiebreaker at the top: Houston and Northeast Passage finished tied on points and tied on goals against, so it went to penalty minutes, says Norm Page of the local event organizer, Greater Buffalo Adaptive Sports. Northeast Passage came out ahead, taking the No. 2 seed over Houston at No. 3.

On Saturday, the story of the quarterfinal round was the No. 5 seed Grand Rapids Frenzy. Grand Rapids opened with a 13-1 win over the Long Island Hammerheads, then beat No. 4-seeded Buffalo Bandits, 4-0, in the quarterfinals to reach the semifinals, knocking out a higher seed at every stage.

But their run ended in the semifinals. No. 1-seeded WASA beat No. 5-seeded Grand Rapids, 4-3, a closer game than their pool-play numbers might have suggested. On the other side of the bracket, the No. 2-seeded Northeast Passage Wildcats beat the No. 3-seeded Houston Apollos, 4-2, staying unbeaten and setting up a final between the tournament’s only two undefeated teams.

No. 1-seeded WASA recorded the shutout to take the title, while No. 5-seeded Grand Rapids finished third — defeating No. 3 seed Houston, 6-2, in the third-place game.

Full Results

Friday, August 21 — Pool Play

Pool A

Pool B

Pool C

Saturday, August 22 — Championship Bracket

Play-In

Quarterfinals

Semifinals

Gold Medal Game

Consolation & Placement Games