Lacrosse, the sport of the future?

It's been more than a century since football began matriculating from the East Coast to the West. The sport was played at its highest levels in places like Harvard and Yale and branched out to the Mississippi River. It took a swell of East Coasters moving and working in the West for the game to finally take shape in places like California and Nevada. Now, sports have begun a trip back to the future. Just like football came here long ago, lacrosse has made its ascension in California and continues to be one of the fastest growing team sports in the country, according to U.S. Lacrosse, the governing body of lacrosse in the United States.While youth have flocked to the sport, it has yet to translate to the high school or collegiate level in the West. It seems, though, that it's only a matter of time until the sport is played on campuses throughout the Gold Country and across the state."Once I started lacrosse it just really took over and nothing else really seemed relevant," said Peter Mitchell, a junior at Bear River High who plays lacrosse on the club level with Gold Country Lacrosse.What is lacrosse?Native Americans invented lacrosse and had games that saw thousands of them throwing around a homemade ball with sticks made out of leather, cat guts and dead wood, said Avery Blake, who is a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and serves as president emeritus for Gold Country Lacrosse based out of Grass Valley.The sport has long-since evolved from guts and cow hide and into one that, in the East, rivals the popularity of football."In a lot of cases, an awful lot of cases, lacrosse is as popular in spring as football is in the fall," said Blake, who played collegiately at Swathmore College in Pennsylvania. "You walk around, like I grew up in the Baltimore and Philadelphia area, in those days you could walk down the street any time of the year and find kids walking with their lacrosse sticks. Big difference."The premise is a lot like soccer and hockey with goals at either end and positions like goalie, midfielder, defender and attacker, which is like a forward in soccer. It also involves some contact like football, which requires lacrosse players to wear helmets and some padding.Lacrosse has begun to catch on nationally. Major League Lacrosse, the largest professional lacrosse league in the country, signed a 10-year broadcasting deal with ESPN in 2007, colleges outside of the traditional northeast now field the sport and high schools have started to catch on too.Area impactLocally, nine schools compete in the Sac-Joaquin Section but that's out of the 177 schools in the section. Club teams, like the one in Grass Valley along with others in Loomis and Granite Bay, fill in the void for aspiring lacrosse players who can't play on school-sanctioned teams.Gold Country Lacrosse is comprised of athletes from mainly Bear River and Nevada Union High, while Sierra Foothill Lacrosse out of Loomis fills its roster through Del Oro, Placer and wherever else it can. Competing on the CIF level is a slippery slope, it seems. The interest is there in some schools but creating another sport in this economic climate is a nightmare considering that schools have struggled to keep athletics afloat. "It's just the climate right now isn't about expansion, it's more about reduction," Bear River athletic director Duwaine Ganskie said. "That's almost an impossible question to answer. We're not looking in those directions at all. I'd never say never to anything but certainly in this climate, not just economic, but declining enrollment. We're stretched right now with the programs we offer just in terms of the number of kids we have available to fill all of those programs."It also dives into a tangled web of Title IX implications. The education amendment calls for equal opportunities in both male and female sports. The popularity of football often leaves schools scrambling to match up with the massive rosters that can sometimes top 50 players on the varsity team alone. An additional road block comes by way of the season lacrosse is played. It's traditionally a spring sport which is already chocked full of team and individual sports like baseball, softball, girls soccer and track."Some of the best girl athletes are in soccer and those are exactly your lacrosse players," said Kurt Robinson, who operates Sierra Foothill Lacrosse based out of Loomis. "They're running fit, they have field sense, they know triangles, they know how to get open for passes, they know how to defend, keep the ball out of the house, they're naturals. Basketball runs into your whole training month of lacrosse because the season's too short and football runs into you're whole recruiting season for lacrosse."For everything holding lacrosse back in this area, it has taken a foothold in northern California. The Northern California Junior Lacrosse Association is the governing body that most area clubs fall under, which includes 405 teams, ages 9-and-under through varsity level.More than 200 California high schools have added either boys or girls lacrosse since the 2002-03 season, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Part of the growth can be attributed to East Coasters who want to share the sport with their children. Robinson formed Sierra Foothill Lacrosse with his son, Trevor Robinson, who used the startup as his senior project at Del Oro. Granite Bay's program was started by Scott Pink, who was a four-year letterman for Harvard's lacrosse program. And then there is Blake, who aside from being a hall of famer himself is the son of a hall of famer, Avery Blake Sr.Lacrosse, like football generations ago, has become a social heirloom. Fathers have handed it down to their sons and the sport has built a web across the country. It may take a few more generations but lacrosse fanatics are hopeful the growth will continue. "It will definitely be a sport I play my whole life," Mitchell said. "(I'm) definitely going to play in college. I'm actually trying to decide on what colleges I want to go to based off if they have a lacrosse club or if they have a team."