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Lacrosse, exploding elsewhere, slowly gaining ground in the Valley
Lacrosse, exploding elsewhere,
is slowly growing in the Valley
It’s known as the fastest sport on two feet.
It’s also perhaps the fastest-growing sport in America.
So why hasn’t lacrosse generated enough speed in the Mahoning Valley to carve out as big a following as the rest of Ohio?
Some believe it has, but the sport’s just buried too deep on athletic departments’ depth charts.
Lacrosse is a sport with origins dating back to the Native Americans. It’s most popular along the East Coast, particularly Maryland and New England, but has been making its way west for the past decade.
When Paul Balcerzak took over as commissioner of the Ohio High School Lacrosse Association five years ago, the state had 73 school districts with school-affiliated lacrosse teams. There were a dozen or so more club teams.
The major cities — Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus — had larger pockets of teams than some of the less-populated areas of the state, but the sport began to mushroom outward. The one city in particular with a noticeable lacrosse absence was Youngstown.
In fact, prior to 2009, there were zero teams.
Five years later, 40 more Ohio schools have added the sport and become a part of the ever-growing OHSLA. Youngstown-area schools have contributed three of those teams. While a city like Cleveland continues to add two to three programs a year, according to Balcerzak, the sport has yet to pick up around the Valley.
“It’s a little out of the beaten path, I think,” Balcerzak said of Youngstown. “Most is radiated form the metro areas. I’m not sure why Youngstown isn’t progressing like the others, but that’s just a thought.”
New Sport in Town
Before 2009, lacrosse was nothing more than a out-dated Buick model to most Mahoning Valley residents.
That’s when Cardinal Mooney became the first area school to sanction the sport, thanks to a couple of rogue parents led by Tom Trefethern.
Trefethern had helped build a lacrosse program at Stow High School the previous year and quickly became entrenched in the sport. He enlisted the help of a couple long-time friends — Jim Boniface and Terry Reardon — who had sons the same age.
“We wanted to bring something new for our kids, their friends, and their classmates at the school and in the area,” Trefethern said. “Like any dad or any parent, you want as many opportunities for your kids.”
Trefethern’s son, Mike, was starting high school and wanted to play lacrosse. His friends felt the same way. So the three dads got together and figured out what needed to be done to get a team started at Mooney. While Trefethern took the lead with the boys, Boniface got the ball rolling for a girls team.
The push back from the school was almost immediate. Trefethern realized as beneficial as the sport can be to some kids, others were looking at it as detrimental to the school’s more established sports.
Lacrosse is a spring sport. How many baseball players was it going to take? How many girls would switch from softball? Were football players going to be drawn to its physical nature and begin playing in the offseason?
These were the types of questions Trefethern was fielding and, as valid as they were, it was becoming very evident why lacrosse wasn’t thriving not just at Mooney, but all across the area.
“It is very difficult to get a football school to adopt a new sport,” Trefethern said.
But before schools could squash lacrosse, their students were falling in love with the sport. The trio of dads realized this and used it to their advantage.
Learn to Love
Mooney’s program was the extent of lacrosse in the Valley until last year. That’s when Canfield High School, with an assist from Trefethern, entered the mix.
While the school board wasn’t prepared to go all-in on it, Trefethern had the right man in his corner.
Long before Greg Cooper was in his current role as athletic director at Canfield, he was the deputy director of athletics at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. For three years, Cooper was positioned in the hotbed of lacrosse and its growing popularity.
It wasn’t hard for him to see why kids in the area were starting to take a liking to it. However as an athletic director, he had to make sure he considered all parties.
“If you offer too many sports, particularly with the long seasons and the other things available in the offseason, it’s hard not to be concerned,” Cooper said. “As great a sport as lacrosse is — with the cool helmets and its fast pace — if you’re at an intermediate- to small-sized school, that’s a young man or woman who’s not playing baseball and softball or running track.
“On the other hand, it would provide a great alternative for an awful lot of football players who could play lacrosse in the spring.”
Cooper noted former Cleveland running back Jim Brown’s success in both sports, earning All-American honors in football and lacrosse while at Syracuse University. He’s even entertained suggesting his current football players to take a look at the sport as a supplement to offseason weight-lifting and conditioning.
“As the lacrosse program here develops,” Cooper said, “I tell them if you want something else to do, lacrosse is a great sport.”
Although the team isn’t sanctioned by Canfield Local Schools, that’s not to say Cooper doesn’t have his finger on its pulse.
“They’re doing exactly what they’ve needed to do because there’s interest in the community and the means to support it,” he said. “Demonstrate a track record, show that they’ve got a business plan-type concept and enough sustained interest, and there will come a point where the school board could decide to spend money toward the sport.”
On the Brink
With 113 school districts having teams in the OHSLA today, and almost two dozen more club teams, lacrosse is inching closer to joining forces with the Ohio High School Athletics Association.
“I have to applaud [the OHSAA] of being considerate of what we want to do,” Balcerzak said. “I have a great appreciation of what they’re trying to accomplish and I think we can find a way to make this work.”
He said he was pleasantly surprised they offered suggestions to help, rather than just talk about the bottom line. The OHSLA has also aligned themselves with the same rules —such as offseason limitations and coaching requirements — to strengthen its case.
The benchmark for the number of programs the OHSAA likes a sport to have before adding it is 150. And lacrosse will reach that with or without Youngstown’s participation.
It’s up to the schools if they want to catch up.