Girls Lacrosse Player of the Year: Render paces Hillgrove's historic season

As a student-athlete, Hillgrove’s Lauren Render knows all about what it means to be hard at work.

All the time, effort, expenses and self-motivation culminated in Render being named the Cobb County Girls Lacrosse Player of the Year by the county coaches.

The three-sport athlete — Render was also a lead player for Hillgrove’s girls basketball team and its state championship girls flag football team — made a substantial impact for the Lady Hawks, as they finished a program-best 18-2 and advanced to the Class 6A/7A state quarterfinals.

Render took on a key leadership role as a starting midfielder. She led the way with 81 goals, which accounted for nearly 30% of Hillgrove’s offensive output.

Render finished her high school career with 250 goals, 62 assists, 190 ground balls, 95 caused turnovers and 265 draw control wins — all team records.

Render, who has signed with Virginia Tech, said she persevered through self-motivation, which she credited for where she has landed today.

“I always have pushed myself. I’ve always been hard on myself, and I feel sports have come natural to me,” Render said, “so I feel that it can’t hurt to strive to get better at it. (I’m) just pushing myself. I did it for my family. I really wanted to play college lacrosse, especially at Virginia Tech — my dad went to Tech — so getting that level and getting to play every game at Tech and following in (his) footsteps kind of motivated me, too.

“Not a lot of people from Georgia really go to college for lacrosse especially because it’s such an up-north sport — Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, all those schools and high schools and players up there are really known for lacrosse, so being from Georgia — I guess it puts a label on my name”

Hillgrove coach Keon Humphries commended Render for all she did for the program and school.

“Lauren Render is the absolute most dynamic, dominant and humble athlete that anybody would ever have come to,” Humphries said.

Render said she believes her level of performance was necessary to become an effective leader.

“I didn’t try to become the best athlete I can just for myself,” she said. “I wanted to do it for my teammates and perform (as) best as I could for them, too, because the season meant a lot to all of us. It was kind of weird, especially with COVID. This season, we knew we had the talent from the jump. From tryouts, we knew that this (was) going to be our best season, and it really was. We beat Milton. We beat a lot of teams that Hillgrove was never known to beat. We were always underdogs, but beating those teams kind of motivated all of us to push harder at practice every day.”