Loving lacrosse
Girls field lacrosse is growing in Hamilton. As a result, Canada’s national sport is finally taking hold in local schools.
AS MARK MCCOMB walked down the hall and saw only four students standing outside the classroom, his heart sank a bit.
The Sherwood Secondary School teacher had called a meeting for girls interested in starting a school field lacrosse team, and it looked like the idea was about to die on the vine.
“Then I went into the room and I saw 40 of them,” he laughs, “And I said, ‘Now I have to make this happen.’”
He is making it happen, with the coaching and organizational input of Bill and Jen Moore, the co-directors of the Hamilton Lacrosse Association’s girls field lacrosse program.
Only two of the Sherwood players — Grade 11 student Abigail Oates and Olivia Baldini, Grade 9 — have played the field game; but there are excellent athletes from other sports among the two dozen left from the first meeting.
They’ve been working on basic skills and some team-play concepts.
McComb, an assistant men’s coach at McMaster, has also started a boys program at Sherwood, with 17 players, five of whom have field experience. They already look promising, with a win, loss and a draw at a recent Burlington invitational tournament.
The Sherwood launch symbolizes some encouraging growth in the city for Canada’s original national game. Hamilton District Christian High
School has a boys field team, as does St. Thomas More, while Bishop Ryan is looking to field girls and boys teams this spring. HDCH has sporadically fielded a girls team — the last in 2016 that played a few exhibition games.
Boys field lacrosse is a “festival sport” at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) level, but is inching close to full championship status.
Girls field is still at least three years away from applying as a festival sport, which involves a provincial tournament, but not an official Ontario championship. Those designations, or lack thereof, reflect the number of registered players, schools and provincial regions involved.
The field teams at Sherwood, Bishop Ryan and St. Thomas More will not participate in any official playdowns, but will play an exhibition games against each
other and against the more established programs in Caledonia, Cayuga and Hagersville. The latter three are in the Grand Erie league, which is also home to the
HDCH boys team, which has been in existence for 10 years. The Grand Erie boys teams are eligible to play toward the OFSAA festival in Ottawa in June.
The new girls teams fit into a wider growth pattern that began with one HLA girls field team (under-13s) in 2010, run by Bill and Jen Moore (who works in The Spectator’s newsroom). There are now 90 girls in the program, with rep teams in four age divisions, and a new house league this year for under-9s. The under-19s have gone from being ranked 24th of 24 in Ontario to No. 9 with a bullet last year, and more expected this season.
Many of the HLA’s under-19s practise with the Mac’s women’s team. Growing the high school game is the next logical course of action to integrate the female game in and around Hamilton, both Jen Moore and Mac’s women’s coach Brendan Sweeney say.
Sweeney is also the coach of Hamilton’s ascendant under-19’s and has agreed to take on the Bishop Ryan project. At last Friday’s initial practice for the girls team, he had 20 players, five who had played for the under-19s.
“Another five have played some field or box lacrosse before, and there’s another handful of really good athletes,” Sweeney says. “They all seem keen.”
The Ontario Lacrosse Association lent McComb 40 women’s field sticks. He sent 18 of them over to Sweeney for Bishop Ryan.
The girls game differs from the boys with no body contact, so girls only need a mouthguard. The sticks are narrower with no pocket, making it more difficult to pass, catch and shoot. All the modifications relate to safety.
Grade 11 Sherwood student Emma Clarke, who isn’t really involved in other sports, says “Most of us are new, so there’s not too much pressure to not miss when you’re trying to catch the ball. That makes it fun.”
“I see lots of potential here,” adds her 14-year-old teammate Olivia Baldini, who plays on under-19s. “Girls are picking it up super fast. I like what I see.”