High school lacrosse's popularity increasing

In a stuffy room alongside a snack bar, Pete Lee assembled cheeseburgers and dispensed statistics.

Lacrosse is rapidly growing in the Sacramento region, Lee said. Proof was on the other side of the door, where a few hundred lacrosse fans watched a collegiate game at Foothill High School on Sunday.

Lee took a break from the snack bar to enjoy the scene: Boys and girls running around the Foothill Farms campus with lacrosse sticks, waiting for men's club teams from Stanford and Washington to resume their game after halftime.

Washington had played Chico State earlier and was to fly out of Sacramento International Airport, and Stanford had an opening on its schedule; hence, the Sunday exhibition.

"There was virtually no lacrosse" in the Sacramento region just a few years ago, Lee said excitedly.

Lee, who started playing lacrosse in the 1970s and now coaches Foothill's boys team, has a theory about why the sport is increasingly popular.

"The people who play the sport love it," Lee said. Many of them have time to share their lacrosse experience and passion for the sport, and coach high school or youth league teams.

A survey published by US Lacrosse, the sport's national governing body, shows participation at all levels has increased. In 2001, there were 253,931 players registered nationally; in 2007, 480,627 players took part in the sport, from youth competitors to professionals.

"The game sells itself," said David Webster, Bella Vista boys coach. "It's the ultimate team sport."

Nationally, 201,250 boys and girls played high school lacrosse in 2007, a one-year increase of 18.6 percent that represented the fastest-growing segment identified in the report.

Locally, about a dozen boys competed in 2000 as a first-year club team at Bella Vista. Webster, who coached that team, said it started with a loaner kit from US Lacrosse that came with 22 sticks and a dozen balls.

Webster made the goals using supplies he bought at a home improvement store.

"Since then, the growth is insane," Webster said.

Five local high school boys teams are competing in the first season of the California Interscholastic Federation Sac-Joaquin Section-sanctioned Sacramento Valley Lacrosse Conference: Bella Vista, Foothill, Granite Bay, Jesuit and Oak Ridge. There are no section playoffs yet, though, because not enough teams participate.

The section has six girls teams. Bella Vista, Christian Brothers, Granite Bay, Oak Ridge and St. Francis play in the Freelance League; Davis plays in the Bay Area-centered Diablo Valley League.

Girls lacrosse hasn't enjoyed the same degree of growth seen on the boys side in Sacramento, said Kellie Finn, a local lacrosse enthusiast.

"It's much smaller than the boys," said Finn, an NCAA women's lacrosse referee and co-founder of Sacramento Lacrosse Clinics. "We're half."

Finn said girls lacrosse is handicapped by the lack of coaches who can teach the sport, which is a non-contact version of the hard-hitting boys game.

But Finn said the sport's overall growth prompted her to open a lacrosse equipment and apparel store in Roseville in 2004. In November, a second store – Lacrosse Fanatic – was opened in Sacramento. "Business is good," said Lou Felker, store manager at Lacrosse Fanatic.

The game's attraction is simple, players say.

"It's fun, and it takes a lot of skill," said James Myers, a 17-year-old Bella Vista senior who watched Stanford defeat Washington 15-13 Sunday.

Teammate Jimmy Karnezis, 16, said he has been impressed with the growth in Sacramento. Karnezis and his family moved from Maryland, a lacrosse hotbed. His mother, Georgia, said her husband checked out the local lacrosse programs before the family settled in.

"I'm actually good out here," Jimmy Karnezis said with a smile. "I want it to become more popular so there will be more competition."

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