Agata Fin was the ripe old age of 8 when she set a lofty goal to one day play for Italy’s women’s lacrosse national team.
The Cal Berkeley freshman and 2024 Los Gatos High graduate achieved her goal in the summer of 2023, playing for Italy in the Under-21 European Championships. As delightful as that experience was for Fin, it was a mere foreshadowing of an even greater event she would participate in: the U20 World Lacrosse Women’s Championship Aug. 15-24 in Hong Kong.
As one of the team’s starting defenders, the 18-year-old Fin helped Italy advance to the quarterfinals in the team’s World Championship debut. A tournament-ending loss to eventual runner-up Canada on Aug. 21 did little to dampen Italy’s impressive breakthrough run, which included a second-place finish in Pool C.
“It was super exciting for us as an organization because we weren’t ranked coming in, and that was the first appearance for Italy in the U20 stage,” Fin said. “It was the furthest any Italian team had ever gotten. So, it was a really big deal.”
Fin was named co-captain of the team near the end of Italy’s national team training camp in May.
“I never anticipated it and felt very honored to be selected,” she said. “It was a blessing.”
Fin said she thought the Italian coaches saw her pride for the national team and intentionality in building up team chemistry.
“I’m very much into having the team work well together and spend time together,” she said. “It’s super important we work on relationships because you can really see it on the field. It’s a team sport, so trust is important and working on team dynamics was a key for us.”
Outside of spending time with her teammates and building deeper relationships with them, Fin’s personal highlights included a thrilling 11-10 win over Scotland—the Italians rallied from a 7-1 deficit in the final game of pool play to clinch a berth in the championship rounds—and the quarterfinal match against Canada, which entered the tournament as the top-ranked team in the world. Even though the Italians lost 25-2, the match was one Fin will remember for a long time.
“I personally admire a bunch of girls on Team Canada, so it was an honor playing against them,” she said. “To be playing against girls I idolized for a while was surreal. It was really encouraging and such high level lacrosse, and an honor to share the pitch with them.”
Fin’s summer—while exhilarating—required a serious balancing act, as she had to finish her senior year two weeks early to participate in Italy’s training camp in May. She came back home for LGHS graduation ceremonies but returned to Italy in July for the national team’s pre-World Championship camp.
Coming back stateside was an equally busy time. Fin arrived at SFO at 10am on Aug. 28. She went straight to Los Gatos to pack all of her belongings and then drove to Berkeley, arriving at 4pm the same day.
“I’ve been recovering,” she said. “Academics and getting sleep have been the things I’ve been focusing on.”
A naturalized American citizen, Fin, despite being born in Amsterdam, inherited an Italian-Ecuadorian passport.
“My father is from Verona, Italy, and my mom is Ecuadorian,” Fin said. “So, making Italy’s national lacrosse team was my aspiration at (age) 8. I remember having this Italian T-shirt that I wore to practice.”
Fin only started playing lacrosse in the third grade after she quit gymnastics.
“I really wanted to be a gymnast, but my career was cut off early because I couldn’t do a cartwheel,” she said. “I had spent two lessons at least trying to cartwheel. Luckily, my friend invited me to a lacrosse practice, and that’s how I got my start in the sport.”
Fin was a top LGHS student-athlete, excelling in lacrosse and field hockey while finishing with a cumulative 4.37 GPA. She’s majoring in neuroscience at Cal and plans to minor in data science, melding the two fields as preparation for her future aspirations.
“I would love to work at a tech company to develop AI as an assistance to daily life,” she said. “I would look to make an artificial brain—something that thinks like a human. That would be my goal.”
