High school lacrosse growth reaches Napa

The world of high school lacrosse is about to get bigger in Napa, CA.

After continuous discussions with the Napa Valley Unified School
District, the Board of Trustees approved to formally add the sport at
both Napa and Vintage High Schools. Justin-Siena has field the sport
since the 2010-2011 school year. The sport will offer both boys and
girls teams in the spring.

Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the United States as high school
student-athletes continue to show interest in participating. The next
hurdles to clear are financial and logistics.

Napa and Vintage moving to the CIF North Coast Section last year from
the Sac Joaquin Section facilitates the adding the sport because the NCS
has a far greater volume of schools with lacrosse than the SJS. Justin has
been in the NCS since the 2000-2001 school year. Quite simply, as
members of the SJS, Napa and Vintage would not have found enough
opponents.

The addition of lacrosse for Napa and Vintage also means the end of the
Napa Force, which is a Northern California Junior Lacrosse Association
team. The reason for the move is because the players on that team that do
not go to Justin, which is a private school of about 600 or so students, can
fill rosters on Napa and Vintage.

For those not familiar, lacrosse combines the skills of various sports in
that the scoring concept involves a net like hockey and soccer. It also
involves using a stick, similar to jockey. The sport also involves stopping
and starting on a dime like soccer and basketball and involves sprinting
like track. The sport is also physical like basketball, soccer and hockey.

The fact that NVUSD is adding this sport does not come as a surprise
because it has become exceedingly more popular locally as well as
nationally. Moreover, an increasing amount of families are leery of their
sons playing football and youths are not universally playing baseball as
past generations. The sport also features a higher volume of scoring than
soccer, hockey or baseball. You can argue whether that’s good, bad or
indifferent but it’s reality.

The only question becomes is the growth of this sport a trend or an
aberration? I lean towards the former. Despite the popularity surge, there
is still segments of people that consider lacrosse an obscure sport. Also,
because of the volume of equipment required to purchase in order to play
the sport, it becomes quite costly.

Between purchasing helmet, stick, elbow pads, and gloves, just to name
a few, suddenly you have a pretty costly sport compared to others that do
not require buying as much equipment.

I would venture to say the growth is closer to being a trend because over
70 NCAA schools field the sport and that’s just at the Div. I level. That
scenario will present yet another sport where a youngster can earn a
scholarship. Couple that with the fact that more high schools and youth
programs are adding the sport, that means the feeder system becomes
bigger.

It is also a sport that does not penalize a kid for his or her lack of size.
Though the sport has been popular for a long time in the Northeastern
states, the growth has especially become prominent in your West Coast
and Midwest states. Keep in mind, the University of Denver was the
first school to field lacrosse that was not in the Eastern time zone.

Even though the sport is not growing as rapidly on the professional
level as it is for youths, the Major League Lacrosse plans to expand to
16 teams within the next ten years. There are current six teams. With
the growth at the youth level, one would think the domino effect reaches
the professional ranks.

Therefore that popularity reaching these parts was only a matter of time.