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EDWARDSVILLE – The game of lacrosse has been growing across the country for the past several years as it has broken from its traditional home of the Northeast and Atlantic Coast.
In fact, the 2015 NCAA lacrosse championship was won by the University of Denver, the first (and so far only) school outside of the traditional schools (Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Syracuse, North Carolina and Duke, for example) to have won the national championship.
In the Metro East area, O’Fallon has both boys and girls lacrosse teams – the only school to field teams in the sport on an interscholastic level. The Illinois High School Association, for the first time this year, conducted an IHSA Lacrosse Championship for both boys and girls; the only schools other than O’Fallon who took part were from the Chicago area. Wilmette Loyola Academy (boys) and Hinsdale Central (girls) won the inaugural state titles.
The growth of the game in the St. Louis area itself has been tremendous; the GlenEd Soccer Club, like many other clubs of its type in the area, is now sponsoring lacrosse teams in Edwardsville thanks to the efforts of Keith Schmidt and Bob Marcus; the two got the GlenEd club to sponsor teams this year that just completed their first season in a St. Louis-area youth lacrosse league.
“We’ve got two under-10 teams and an under-12 team,” Schmidt said. “We played in a youth league in St. Louis and did well; our under-10 teams won their fair share of games and our under-12 team finished in third place in their league. Our parents really took to the game and the kids really loved playing.
“We had more success in the leagues than I imagined we would.”
Schmidt believes the future of lacrosse in the Edwardsville area is a good one. “We’ve had a couple of camps and an introductory camp for kids to learn about the game,” Schmidt said. “We had equipment for the kids and taught them the basics of lacrosse; we had some really good feedback for the camps.”
The eventual goal is to try to begin a parent-funded lacrosse club team at Edwardsville High, much like a combined club team with the Belleville high schools, much like the combined club hockey team for East and West. “We’re hoping it leads to a club team for the high school to give the kids a chance to play,” Schmidt said.
For more information on the GlenEd lacrosse teams, you can email Schmidt at kgschmi@gmail.com or visit the Facebook page at GlenEd Lacrosse.
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