Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Lacrosse coming to Bentonville
Schools to offer club sport in 2018
BENTONVILLE — The School District will begin offering lacrosse as a club sport to its high school students starting next spring with the hope of one day seeing the sport sanctioned by the Arkansas Activities Association.
Sponsorships, fundraising and participation fees will pay for the lacrosse program. It will not need any financial support from the district, said Scott Passmore, athletic director.
Passmore presented the plan to the School Board at its meeting Monday. Administrators generally do not come to the board to discuss starting a club, but Passmore said he wanted to explain the lacrosse teams — one for boys and one for girls — would need to use the district’s athletic facilities at both high schools.
All lacrosse practices
and games will be scheduled around those sports sanctioned by the Arkansas Activities Association, Passmore said.
“This is not going to be running the Bentonville High School soccer team off or Bentonville West football team off their field,” Passmore said.
Only a few other schools in the state offer lacrosse as a club sport. The Northwest Arkansas Lacrosse Club has 44 boys and 22 girls who will be high school students in the district next year, Passmore said.
The district will start with one boys team and one girls team for the entire district with the aim of eventually providing boys and girls teams at both high schools, he said.
The teams will participate in the Heartland Lacrosse league, which consists of teams from Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.
“It would be very easy to schedule 14 to 16 games through the season,” Passmore said. “We would practice three to four times per week and host a minimum of six home games that would be played on the weekend.”
The district will maintain an account which the club will use to keep the money it raises.
Passmore said wrestling started at Bentonville High School as a club sport before it became sanctioned by the association. He said he sees lacrosse following the same path.
Springdale’s Don Tyson School of Innovation is the only other school in Northwest Arkansas that has a club team, Passmore said.
Joe Quinn, a board member, thanked Passmore for his work and the way he’s treated the local lacrosse program.
“This is a great growth move for us. And there are a lot of kids out there who are really excited about wearing the Bentonville athletic brand and playing for their community,” Quinn said.
Board member Brent Leas said he’s glad to see the district offer another sport option for students.
“I’m a big proponent of more participation sports, things that kids can get involved in to keep them active on things like this, rather
than other things kids could do that wouldn’t be so beneficial,” Leas said.
In other business, finance director Janet Schwanhausser presented the board a plan to buy seven buses and one Chevrolet Suburban for a total of $732,476. The board will be asked to approve the purchases at its next meeting May 15.
“We have an aging bus fleet. We try to buy five to six buses every year,” Schwanhausser said.
Six of the buses will be for 77 passengers; the other will hold 54 passengers. The Suburban would be used for the special-education work program at West High School.
Four companies submitted bids on the bus purchases. The lowest bid, which Schwanhausser is recommending the board accept, came from Summit Truck Group.
Twenty-four of the district’s 149 buses are at least 20 years old, according to numbers Schwanhausser provided.