Women's Lacrosse Team's Future Unclear in Wake of Alleged Hazing On the morning of April 12, the women's lacrosse players at Franklin & Marshall learned that their team was the subject of a university investigation. Five days later, the coach was fired and the team's juniors and seniors were suspended amid allegations of a hazing incident said to have occurred more than a year earlier at an event known as Freshmen Fun Night. Ryan Collerd for The New York Times The former coaches of Franklin and Marshall's Lacrosse team, from left, Lidia Sanza, 23, Lauren Paul, 30, and Caitlin Powderly, 30. The decision effectively ended the season of one of the sport's most successful Division III programs, a perennial power that won the 2009 N.C.A.A. championship and felt it had a legitimate chance to compete for the title eventually won by Connecticut's Trinity College last month. Now, with the disappointment of the truncated season lingering, it remains unclear how the team will move forward and, when it does, what it will look like. Kelsey Hoffman, the starting goalie the past two seasons, will return for her junior year but is not sure whether she will play lacrosse. Hoffman said she knew of three other players who had decided not to return to the team. "I am not 100 percent confident if the program will be restored to its original value," Hoffman said. In theory and ideally, I would like to return to the team. But I will have to do some serious thinking as the fall approaches before our fall season begins. The university, a small private institution in Lancaster, Pa., declined to make any of its top officials available for comment, but a spokeswoman said that it stood behind its decision to fire Coach Lauren Paul and suspend the players. It determined after its investigation that "real harm" had been caused by the 2011 episode, which it deemed to be hazing. The spokeswoman, Cass Cliatt, cited privacy and legal issues in declining to detail what Franklin & Marshall believed took place or who was involved, and said the college's focus was on "helping the community move forward." A consultant has been enlisted to help Franklin & Marshall find a new coach, one that it hopes to have in place before the start of fall practices in September. Still, Paul and many of the team's players said they still had questions about what happened to their season, and why. "Honestly, I have no idea why I was fired," said Paul, who was 27 when Franklin & Marshall won the 2009 title, making her the youngest coach in college women's lacrosse history to lead a team to a national championship. They never told me the findings of the investigation. After firing Paul, the university did offer the juniors and the seniors a way to return during the season. That was contingent upon the players agreeing to certain stipulations, ranging from sharing predetermined playing time to no longer wearing eye black. The players declined. "What they gave us back, with the restrictions, was absolutely ridiculous," said Erin Dunne, a senior member of the team who just graduated. It wouldn't be our team. It would be the administration's team. At issue is what happened at an unofficial team event known as Freshmen Fun Night in March 2011. According to a lawyer for Paige Burns, a former player, the activities included the forced consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol and events of a sexual nature, including being blindfolded and having semen sprayed at them. Eight other players who were present, including two freshmen, denied many of these allegations, including those supposedly involving semen. The activities they described occurring - like having an egg race - seemed more consistent with a grade-school party. They blamed the fact that Burns was cut before this past season as a reason she would make the allegations. "The team told us multiple times that if you didn't want to do any activity, you wouldn't have to do it whatsoever," said Hoffman, who was a freshman at the time. Dunne said: "It was supposed to be fun team bonding. We made every single thing voluntary.