Lacrosse at a young age

If you were raised on the East Coast, you probably have played lacrosse, and have some appreciation for the sport.

If you are from the Midwest, you may not know lacrosse exists.

Lacrosse, a sport first played by American Indians back when this land was their land, is exploding in the Midwest, with high school programs sending their most talented players to the many Division I colleges that play intercollegiate lacrosse.

The sport has been a long-standing traditional activity on the East Coast, but until recently has only found pockets of support in the Midwest.

At the high school and college level, lacrosse is a very physical, active game that is high-scoring and requires a great deal of hand-eye coordination.

But kids have to start somewhere, and the best place to start them is in kindergarten.

Today, many parents with seaboard blood are looking for places that will teach their youngest children how to play the game, and there are places in the area that are willing to do so.

Players Indoor Sports Center in Naperville offers lacrosse to boys and girls as young as first grade.

“We use modified sticks, we call them fiddle sticks, and a soft ball, and all we are trying to do is teach them how to catch and throw until they have been through a few sessions,” said Maxine Appenbrink, owner of Players Indoor.

“If they can play T-ball, they can play lacrosse,” said Scott Swearingen, owner of Oxygen, a lacrosse developmental program for McHenry County based in Crystal Lake. “It’s kind of the same thing. The majority of what the young ones do is picking up the ground balls on the pass. But if they are strong enough to hold the stick, they can throw the ball with it. It’s very similar to a baseball throw.”

Ball movement in lacrosse is done with the small net at the end of the lacrosse stick. The ball is thrown from that net and caught there. You can’t touch the ball with your hands or feet.

“But I don’t know that that is any harder than catching a ball with a baseball glove,” Appenbrink said. “It is all about hand-eye coordination. We use a smaller ball going into a bigger net so it is easier to catch.”

Interest in youth lacrosse comes from two angles. There are the lacrosse veteran families who know what they are looking for, and there are the “newbies” who are looking to expose their children to a variety of athletic encounters.

“There is a lot of both of those,” Appenbrink said. “In some cases you have older siblings who are playing it and the younger ones want to do it. But most parents are thinking ‘Let’s try everything, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.’”

“Usually, the kids sell it to the kids,” said Tom Wood, the founder of Fox Valley Lacrosse, one of the premier boys youth lacrosse clubs in Illinois. “It’s tougher with the parents because they never played, so there is not this propensity to go out and look for lacrosse. If they have played, they will push their kids to play.”

Lacrosse sells itself to little kids in much the same way soccer does. Wood said on the East Coast, youth lacrosse dwarfs youth baseball.

“It is such a fun game,” Wood said. “Everybody touches the ball, everybody can score, you run around a lot, and there is a lot more action.”

Brian McGinnis, who works with Wood in Fox Valley Lacrosse, has a youth program that has received 210 new registrations this year, almost three times the 80 registrations he received last year.

“There is a lot of word-of-mouth going on right now about lacrosse,” said McGinnis, who started playing lacrosse when his family moved from Chicago to Allentown, Pa., when he was in grade school. “The newness of it is getting people excited about wanting to play lacrosse. It is a decision; do I want to play baseball, or soccer or lacrosse.”

Players Indoor Sports Center

playersindoor.com

(630) 470-6400

Oxygen Lacrosse

oxygenlacrosse.com

(847) 886-4529

Fox Valley LaCrosse

foxvalleylax.com

Park districts

Several area park districts, including Wheaton, Naperville and Arlington Heights, offer lacrosse in some form. Check with your local park district for more information.