Lacrosse Increasing in Popularity in Midwest

EVANSVILLE — Lacrosse wasn't your father's sport of choice. It probably isn't yours, either. But it might be your child's someday.

The "fastest game on two feet" no longer is something only people from Mid-Atlantic states play. Despite lacrosse's reputation as preppy, it's developing a niche in the Midwest as America's fastest-growing sport, according to US Lacrosse.

A decade ago, Castle, Memorial and North were the only local high schools with boys lacrosse teams. All Southern Indiana Athletic Conference schools have one at the club level now except Bosse, which is expected to field one full-time next year. Gibson Southern also has a team. So does Owensboro.

Evansville hosted its first lacrosse tournament, the Thunderbolt Shootout, over the weekend at the Goebel Soccer Complex. There were 25 boys teams totaling 500 players from six states. It put the area on the same map as Indianapolis, Nashville, St. Louis and Louisville — all cities that have lacrosse roots dating back 25 years and regularly host tournaments.

"We're only at 10 years," said Jason Laughton, president of Castle Lacrosse. "In another 15, what you're going to see is those who played when it was first starting will start to have kids. That's what you see in Indy is that second generation."

That's basically how soccer has grown to its current popularity. Those who played when it only was budding in America eventually matured and had children who followed suit when it boomed in the 1990s and 2000s.

Lacrosse is following the same path as a medley of many sports. Players don helmets and padding similar to football; like hockey, they check each other and use long sticks. They move throughout the field like soccer and the sport shares terminologies with basketball.

Local travel club Evansville Storm was formed in 2015 and has since played tournaments throughout the Midwest. It started with 19U and 17U programs. Three years ago, it added a 15U team, then 12U last year and 10U this summer.

That means boys from second grade through high school have a local opportunity to play competitively. More are participating because the sport is becoming easily accessible.

"Kids today have a really short attention span, so some of the more traditional sports don't have as much appeal to them," Christine Barnhart said. "Lacrosse is very fast moving."

Barnhart is the president of Southern Indiana Select Lacrosse, which oversees the Evansville Storm and the Hoosier Southern Lacrosse Conference for high school teams. She started working in conjunction with the Evansville Convention & Vistors Bureau last year shortly after it took over management of Goebel from the city's Department of Parks and Recreation.

The ECVB approved a $2 million renovation for Goebel with roughly half the total used to replace an artificial turf field and add a second at the 10-field complex. Those changes, combined with Evansville's location between major cities, convinced Lacrosse America to bring a tournament to town.

The tournament logo was an Evansville-built P-47 Thunderbolt, fittingly on the week of the anniversary of D-Day.

"The Shootout helps the community get a better field for what lacrosse is, how much it's grown and that it can be a lucrative venture for the city," Barnhart said.

Still, Southwestern Indiana is known for its basketball and baseball traditions. Who is playing lacrosse in the summer over AAU basketball or American Legion baseball?

"I played hockey before — so did a lot of these guys — and it's actually a pretty transferrable sport," Memorial senior Harmon Suratt said. "If you played hockey, it's easy to pick up lacrosse. I enjoyed it so much I actually quit hockey to play this full-time."

The 19U team featured players wearing helmets from Castle, Central, Gibson Southern, Harrison, North, Mater Dei and Memorial. Their coach, Michaelangelo Buturri, scored the first high school lacrosse goal in city history back in 2006 for Memorial before playing four years at Hanover College.

"There are a lot of scholarship opportunities even for players who are picking up a stick for the first time in high school, which of course is different than most sports," Buturri said.

He's right in the sense that eight area high school graduates were on college rosters this season. The latest NCAA figures also show that high school boys have a 12.4 percent chance to keep playing at the NCAA level — nearly double the odds of all others.

Yet travel sports as a whole all but have a license to print money because they systematically pull on the heartstrings of parents by promising that if kids play in certain clubs or leagues, there is a college scholarship in reach.

Gaining exposure through a mid-sized tournament is a start, though.

"We've been fighting tooth and nail for every inch to grow the game, especially here in Southern Indiana," Buturri said. "It means the world to us to have a tournament here."

The sport is far from being IHSAA-sponsored. There were 44 high schools with varsity-level boys teams this spring. The IHSAA likely won't even consider sponsorship until that number triples, and that might take another 10 years.

Barnhart hopes the Thunderbolt Shootout will become into an annual local event. As the numbers continue to increase, the sport's growth could snowball.

For now, at least locally, it's something relatively new and fun.

"Hitting the ball in the back of the net every time," Suratt said, "it never gets old."

Contact Courier & Press sports reporter Chad Lindskog on Twitter @chadlindskog or by email [email protected]

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