Popularity of lacrosse increasing so fast there aren't enough coaches
Julie Brandt, a lacrosse coach for girls in 5th and 6th grade in St. Paul, had to petition to start a team when she was in high school. Now playing lacrosse is so popular, St. Paul leagues are short coaches.
Photo by Dan Baden
Lacrosse combines many sports in one, like the roughness of football, the running of track, the fast-paced play of hockey, and the strategy of basketball. -- Dayne Smith, a recent graduate and lacrosse player for the University of St. Thomas
In 2003, Julie Brandt was interested in playing a spring sport, but her school didn’t have one that she liked. So she and her friends started a petition at Centennial High School to create a girl’s lacrosse team. Seven years later, Julie is currently the head coach of St. Paul’s fifth and sixth grade girls lacrosse league.
Although Lacrosse is one of the oldest sports in the U.S. – Native Americans played it – it’s just now starting to get more popular among teens. The number of youth and high school players in the U.S. jumped to 524,895 in 2009 from 225,925 in 2001, a 132 percent increase, according to an annual U.S. Lacrosse survey.
“Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the nation,” said Jim Reilly, assistant head coach at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., who’s been coaching lacrosse for the past 10 years.
In 2001, there were roughly 500 youth lacrosse players and almost no girls teams in Minnesota, according to an annual U.S. Lacrosse survey. Now, leagues such as the St. Paul Youth Lacrosse Association, which was created nine years ago, is becoming so short on staff that the fifth and sixth grade teams are coached by a few star high school players.
“In Minnesota, there are more lacrosse players than qualified coaches or officials can handle,” Reilly said.
The goal of lacrosse is to use a yard-long metal shaft with a mesh net on the end to pick up and carry a ball downfield and shoot it into the opposing team’s goal. The catch: There are 10 opposing players, in upper body pads, helmets and gloves, ready to knock you to the ground.
Dayne Smith, a recent graduate and player for the University of St. Thomas, decided to play lacrosse in his freshman year of high school in 2002.
“I had watched the National College Lacrosse championships on TV,” Smith said, “so I researched the sport and joined a summer league.”
Smith was part of a St. Thomas team that won back-to-back national championships in 2009 and 2010.
Smith thinks lacrosse is on the rise because it combines many sports in one, like the roughness of football, the running of track, the fast-paced play of hockey, and the strategy of basketball.
“It has a spot for everyone with a skill,” Smith said.
Ben Mooney, the head coach and founder for the St. Paul High School Lacrosse program, believes the sport is on the rise for the same reasons that Smith does.
“It offers elements from other sports that are combined into one fun game,” Mooney said.
Mooney said he’s seen the number of high school varsity teams in the metro area shoot up to 80 in 2010 from 6 in 2003.
Bobby Lee, 17, plays right wing defenseman for a junior varsity team in the St. Paul High School Lacrosse league.
“I started playing because my brother started playing, and I just kind of tagged along,” Lee said, “and pretty soon all my friends were playing, because their brothers were playing too.”
Lee is just one of many examples of a kid who’s been swept up by a sport on the rise.
Comments
"The goal of lacrosse is to use a yard-long metal shaft with a mesh net on the end to pick up and carry a ball downfield and shoot it into the opposing team’s goal. The catch: There are 10 opposing players, in upper body pads, helmets and gloves, ready to knock you to the ground."
I think it's important to make the distinction that this is a description of the men's game, not the women's game. The women do not play with pads, helmets and gloves and knocking another player to the ground is not permitted. Also, there are more players on the field in the women's game than there are in the men's game. Men and women may play with similar sticks (not identical. Stick rules are different), that is about where the similarities between the two games end.
The ONLY thing that is the same are the goals. Even the balls are different colors, and there are many differences with the crosse (stick) that the men and women use.
I think both readers bring up an excellent point. Clarifying the differences between men's and women's lacrosse would be helpful, especially to readers who know nothing about the sport.
Great article, nonetheless!
I play lacrosse and I think this is a great article! It's very true and exciting to hear. Soon I hope that more colleges in Minnesota will be welcomed into D3, D2 and D1.
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