Tennessee Temple University is starting women's lacrosse and plans to field an intercollegiate team in the 2015 spring semester.
Monique Blanding will be the coach while continuing in her roles as women's basketball assistant and head cross country coach. While starring in basketball at Reinhardt University, she also played lacrosse there.
"It's the fastest growing sport in the United States, at least at the high school level, and other colleges in the region have lacrosse now," Temple athletic director Kenrick Liburd said Tuesday. "We have the field space for it and someone on staff who played it in college and has serious interest in the sport, so it makes sense for us to add it.
"In her year and a half here, we have been really impressed with Monique's daily approach. We gave her the added responsibility of head cross country coach this year, and that went well."
Blanding, whose bachelor's degree was in sports administration, said she likes lacrosse "because it has a lot of basketball aspects with it." She plans to start recruiting right away and is aware of numerous high school programs in Georgia as well as area school and club teams.