Lacrosse continues growing in Midwest

Lacrosse was generally a foreign concept to Jake Coffey before he started seeing one of his neighbors messing around with a stick and ball.

Intrigued, he decided to give it a shot himself last year as an eighth-grader.

"I just showed up here at practice one day and tried it out, and it was amazing," he said. "I loved it."

Coffey is far from the only boy in the Center Grove school system that has fallen in love with lacrosse, a sport that has long been popular in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states but has recently gained some traction here in the Midwest.

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Center Grove’s club debuted in 2008 with 27 players on a single high school team. Now, there are 188 boys playing across several age levels, from the 53 high school players to the 17 on the 10-and-under roster. Whiteland added a club program of its own last year.

"It’s kind of like where soccer was in Indiana 15 or 20 years ago," said Whiteland coach John Callendar, a Massachusetts native who did some coaching at Center Grove before moving into his current role with the Warriors.

A long history

Originated as early as the 12th century by indigenous tribes in eastern North America, lacrosse was picked up by European immigrants in the mid-1800s and adapted into its current form.

In outdoor field lacrosse, each side has 10 players on the field: three forwards, three midfielders, three defensemen and a goalie. Much like hockey, there are offside rules and teams go on the attack within their offensive zone. Penalties can leave teams a player short, similar to a hockey power play.

Some of the personnel rules differ, though. For instance, each team must keep four players (including the goalie) in its defensive zone at all times and three players in its offensive zone.

While women’s lacrosse does not permit contact, the men’s game does, which makes it an attractive spring alternative for football players.

That was part of what enticed Drew Calvert, now Center Grove’s varsity coach, to come out for the school’s first club team when he was a sophomore in 2008. A lineman in football, he didn’t feel like track or baseball were good fits for him in the spring. He got hooked on lacrosse right away.

"It was kind of the best of both worlds," Calvert said. "The opportunity to still be a part of a contact sport, a physical sport, but at the same time it has that finesse aspect."

"You can run a lot, and you can hit people with sticks," Coffey agreed with a smile.

New game in town

An extremely popular sport in the eastern United States since the 19th century, lacrosse has spread like wildfire over the past two or three decades in particular, invading the rest of the country. With nearly a million participants now nationwide, lacrosse is considered the fastest growing team sport in America.

The Indiana High School Lacrosse Association was formed in the summer of 1998 by former Notre Dame player Justin Shay, and play began the following spring with eight founding members: Brebeuf, Carmel, Culver Academies, Hamilton Southeastern, North Central, Park Tudor, South Bend St. Joseph and Westfield.

Two decades later, the IHSLA has 43 schools with full-fledged varsity status and more than a dozen others with a club designation. But there’s still plenty of room for growth; the only schools on Indy’s southside with established varsity teams besides Center Grove are Roncalli and Southport; Perry Meridian, Plainfield and Whiteland all have fledgling clubs up and running.

Center Grove, which won a club-level state championship in 2010 when the IHSLA ran two separate tournaments, has beefed up its schedule this season in an effort to make it into the varsity postseason. The IHSLA uses Sagarin ratings to determine which 16 teams qualify; the Trojans came into this week ranked 15th.

Though the sport is still in its relative youth at Center Grove, Calvert is trying to set the same high expectations that the school has for all of its varsity teams.

We have such a large group of kids to pick from," he said. "There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be successful."

Whiteland, meanwhile, is still in its infancy but making important strides. The Warriors have a home field for the first time this spring, playing their home games on the football turf, and they’ve picked up some morale-boosting victories against JV teams from more established programs.

At this stage, Callendar is primarily concerned with building a foundation for the future. Only three of his 15 players had any experience with the game before this year.

"It’s about getting them playing time, getting their skill sets up," Callendar said.

The hope at both schools is that word of mouth will lead to more athletes coming out and giving the sport a shot.

Michele Coffey, Jake’s mother, says that the Trojan lacrosse family welcomed her and her son with open arms, even going so far as to let Jake borrow equipment for his tryout so he could test the waters without having to make a big up-front investment.

The Coffeys have been all in ever since, and they’re encouraging more kids in search of something to do to come out and join them.

"There’s a lot of kids that are looking for something that don’t fit into baseball, football, basketball," Michele Coffey said. "Lacrosse is a great spring option."