Growth Spurt NWA sees beginnings of national lacrosse boom

BENTONVILLE -- Two boys positioned themselves at midfield, elbows inside their bent knees and their backs slanted toward the small white ball.

The whistle blew and both scrambled, trying to trap the ball into their nets. One, gaining possession, passed to a teammate down the field. It was fast paced and precise, especially for a pickup game of mainly junior high players in 90-degree heat.

Lacrosse is commonly played along the east coast, but the game has exploded across the country in the last 15 years, including Northwest Arkansas. Nationally, lacrosse saw a rise of 518,841 participants between 2001 and 2014. Since 2006, the sport has had the highest levels of growth of any sport at the high school and collegiate levels, according to NCAA and US Lacrosse annual participation reports.

Fast-paced play

"Get the ball!" someone shouted. Less than 20 seconds later, Grayson Carver, a seventh-grade player on the NWA LAX Lacrosse Club youth team, launched the ball into the soccer-like goal.

Seventh- and eighth-grade boys make up the largest group in the local club, which started eight years ago and offers the only organized teams in the area, said Rob Price, US Lacrosse chapter president for Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Steve Goetze, the NWA club's youth boys athletic director, has helped coach the group since they were third-graders. The group has grown by 400 percent in that four-year span, now with 40 players and two teams, said Goetze.

The largest segment of participation on the national level is also at the youth level (under age 15), with just under 425,000 participants, according to US Lacrosse.

The NWA club has around 168 youth and high school players as of the end of the 2016 season in May. While there are only about 40 girls competing, Price said the women's participation has been increasing at a slightly faster rate, which again follows the national trend.

Despite recent growth, Arkansas still lags behind other neighboring states. The only other program in the state is Little Rock Lacrosse, which is much smaller, Price said.

Neighboring Oklahoma is growing about 20 times faster because of support from the Indian Nations, he said. It's also big in Texas.

Originally played by Native Americans, lacrosse is recognized as one of the oldest team sports in North America.

"We have baby lacrosse here in the grand scheme," said David McDaniel, who coaches the high school team and played lacrosse as a high school student in Louisiana. "Texas has very mature lacrosse."

The growth of lacrosse in Northwest Arkansas shows no signs of stopping and is really just beginning, the coaches said.

"I think our biggest proponent for growth right now has been word of mouth. I know my son was an active recruiter in that age range," Goetze said. "We also get students because of Walmart that move in from other areas that are familiar and good with game."

The biggest obstacle, Price said, is simply educating the public on what lacrosse is.

"Parents are getting more involved in the sport now, and it's about understanding of the sport as a whole," he said. "You know, lacrosse is new to a lot of these people. They have never seen the sport played."

Family-orientated

Goetze was first introduced to the sport by his first-grade son, Henry, who watched a lacrosse game on TV.

"His head pops up over the chair, he points at the TV and says, 'Hey dad, can we get some sticks?'" Goetze recalled.

Now, Henry is in eighth-grade and recently attended a Texas lacrosse camp with his father.

Goetze joined the NWA club's staff as an assistant coach soon after his son started playing.

"I took the responsibility seriously and learned the game, working in the backyard with my son on it," he said. "My wife would say it is my second job even though it doesn't pay anything."

Many of the club's other coaches and staff members became involved after or alongside their children.

It is a small, family-type environment and that is important in growing the game, Junior High Director Chris McCarty said. His daughter plays goalie for the girls' high school team, the Black Diamonds.

"What our club told us this year was to play so many games that parents are begging for less games next year," McCarty said.

"Because they have been begging for more games the last couple of years," McDaniel joked.

The club played a total of 68 games, averaging about 20 games per team.

Several of the University of Arkansas club players also help coach the NWA LAX club teams.

Hannah Merlo is the high school head coach and a recent UA graduate. All of the coaches are certified through the US Lacrosse Coaching Education Program.

"It's a family and we have a great support system," Merlo said. "We are all certified. You are really a dual coach. You're a life coach and a lacrosse coach. The whole community is great, and we just try to support everyone."

Future growth

Goetze said the club plans to add a second branch in Washington County in the next year or two.

Pulaski Academy in Little Rock and a group in Fort Smith are interested in starting up a club as well, Price said.

Lacrosse is a sport that players of all sizes can participate in, coaches said.

"Here's the great thing: lacrosse is not a sport where you need to be stereotypical tall, fast, strong," Price said. "Anybody, male or female, can play the game at any skill set."

"The stick is the great equalizer," McDaniel added.

One of the junior high boys' teams finished second in the 2016 Indian Nation Conference season, and a younger team won in the post-season Texas Draw tournament.

As the number of talented young players grows, so does the number of Arkansas students who go on to play college lacrosse.

Parker Evans, an incoming senior at Bentonville High, is being looked at by about 20 college lacrosse programs, including multiple D1 schools, he said.

Two graduates from this year's club team are attending Colorado State for D2 lacrosse, and several D3 schools, including Hendrix College, have recruited players from the NWA club.

"It's surprising, being a kid from Arkansas, having a lot of colleges look at you," Evans said.

Out of the 14 colleges in the SEC, only Florida and Vanderbilt have NCAA Division 1 women's teams.

However, five colleges across the country started D1 teams this year, and 55 NCAA D1-3 programs are planned to begin by 2018 -- an increase significantly larger than any sport on the collegiate levels, according to the US Lacrosse website and NCAA participation rates report.

The UA men's club team has been around since the early 2000s, but has grown quite a bit in the last two years, team director Glenn Kelley said. The 37 players from this season came from across the US, but mostly from the Dallas area, he said.

"We are trying to make the transition from it being just a walk-on sport -- for years I think it had been that way -- to being much more competitive in the next few years," he said.

Sports on 06/30/2016