The first time doing anything is really never easy. You think about the simple things growing up — first time riding a bike, driving a car or living on your own.

However, for first-year girls lacrosse coaches Alex Sullivan and Marcia Wood of Brunswick and Freeport high schools, respectively, the 2015 season marks the first year at the helm.

Sullivan played for the Dragons, graduated from Brunswick High School and will return to her old stomping grounds, while Wood’s high school coaching experience comes behind the Freeport field hockey team and beyond as a coach at Scarborough High School.

The Dragons have slowly climbed the ladder over the last couple of years, finishing 3-9 in former coach Stephanie Fisher’s first year in 2013, while jumping to 5-7 just a season ago.

“I think I’m just really excited to be a part of the Brunswick program again,” Sullivan said. “I think that was the pinnacle of my lacrosse days. Taking on this new role, I’ve learned a lot. The game has changed a lot in the last eight years.”

Sullivan’s experience as a player ended when she graduated in 2007, but has always had a love for the game. However, much like any sport, equipment, rules and style, change. Adapting to these concepts become the challenge, but the Brunswick players have taken her style in stride.

“I’ve had to cater some things to the new style of play and new rules,” Sullivan said. “Everything I have brought to them they’ve taken and they’ve absorbed it and executed it well. I have a complete, newfound respect of the coaches I’ve worked with over the last few years.”

For Wood, coaching lacrosse isn’t anything new, but the challenges lie in adapting to the Falcons program. New players and unfamiliar faces always make things harder, but she said the players also face that difficult task in adapting to change.

“For this team, it’s all lacrosse,” she said. “I mean I’ve been coaching for 10 years, but this is just my first year with this team. I’m just trying to focus on getting to know the girls and figuring out what positions I think they play best in. It’s also about them getting used to me. It’s a complete change and they have to get used to my style of coaching and my style of how I want them to play, so in a week-and-a-half we’ve been working on that.”

Wood replaces former coach Karin Kurry, who completed the 2014 season with a 10-2 record and a run to the Eastern B Regional Finals, to which Yarmouth cut the Falcons short, 11-6. Kurry’s last three seasons were arguably her best, with Freeport advancing to the State Class B title game in 2012 (a 16-5 loss Waynflete) and the Eastern B semifinals in 2013, also falling to Yarmouth, leaving Wood with team that is itching to make another strong push in the postseason.

With two years under her belt as the Falcons field hockey coach, the transition into the new spot for Wood is a little easier.

“I see more of the girls,” she said. “A lot of these girls are soccer players so it’s nice to see them in the spring season. Some of my field hockey players play lacrosse as well.”

Sullivan’s first regularseason game as Brunswick’s coach will be a crossover match against veteran coach Linda Levesque and her Morse Shipbuilders next Friday, while Wood and her team will host York this upcoming Thursday.