A quick sports trivia question. What is the fastest-growing sport in many Lake County schools?
Need more clues? It hardly existed in the Chicago area more than a decade ago and now is played by boys and girls. Still want help? It is played indoors and outdoors, and you don’t need to be the size of a linebacker to excel. Still stumped? How about this: It is the national sport of Canada.
Soccer? True, it has been on the rise in Lake County but already has reached big-time status at most schools.
Hockey? Good guess, but wrong.
Lacrosse, invented by Native Americans more than 300 years ago, is the answer. From all indications, it will become a major spring sport in many schools early in the next century.
The sport once was a part of wars between tribes and consisted of 1,000 players on a side. A relatively new phenomenon to the Chicago area, it has been played along the Eastern seaboard, particularly from the Chesapeake Bay area up through New England. It also has been a successful sport in areas of the Rocky Mountain states and to some degree in areas of California.
It is, in fact, transplants from those areas who have introduced the game to Lake County. Call it the “Johnny Appleseed” effect.
Amanda Bertelson, a junior at Libertyville High School, played the game for a year in Golden, Colo. When she moved to Lake County five years ago, she introduced it to friends and schoolmates.
“When we moved here from Colorado, most of the kids around here hadn’t heard much about it,” said Amanda, 16. “Once they saw how exciting it was, they said, `Wow.’ It’s basically a fun game, not that difficult to learn and requires a lot of speed and hand-to-eye coordination.”
But it’s tough to add another sport into an already crowded field of extracurricular activities. The game is fast, but possibly its greatest appeal for kids is that great size isn’t required as it is in football, hockey or even soccer.
“That’s a large part of the appeal, that students of different sizes can all play the same sport,” said Marilyn McBride, a receptionist at Libertyville High School. “My son played it at Libertyville before he graduated and went on to Cornell, where in the Ivy League it is a big sport. My daughter, Megan, just graduated and is at Knox College (in Galesburg, Ill.), where she is trying to get the sport going down there.”
Rich Martin could be called the Pied Piper of the sport for Lake County youth. He is a part-time employee of Libertyville High, where he is the boys lacrosse coach, but his full-time job is running Lacrosse America, a Highland Park-based company that does everything from lend equipment to eager youngsters wanting to learn the sport to staging clinics and organizing leagues throughout the county.
A native of Connecticut, Martin played the sport while growing up but had to direct his post-college focus toward earning a living.
“I worked downtown and then got involved in coaching at Loyola Academy” in Wilmette, Martin explained. “I love the sport; I couldn’t get enough of it, and coaching was a way to work and teach kids about it.”
He got the Libertyville job in 1994 and, at the same time, established his company.
“He really is the motivating force behind it in the area,” said Amanda Bertelson’s mother, Linda, who works as an assistant to Martin. “He has been a tireless worker on behalf of the sport, even to the point of lending the equipment to families whose children may be interested in the sport.”
It must be working. Camps he organized in the area draw as many as 1,000 youngsters ages 8 and older who want to learn the sport. He has also staged clinics across the county, the latest in Round Lake, where the sport is just getting started.
“It’s going to be huge. It’s already drawing terrific interest,” said Bob Newport of the Round Lake Recreation Department. “The growth in Lake County and along the North Shore over the past several years has been tremendous.”
Newport theorizes that the relatively low expense for the sport–there is little equipment for boys and even less for the girls version–and the ample park areas in the county make it a “natural” for those willing to take the time to learn the relatively easy rules.
“I sat in on one session, and some of the boys and girls were a little reluctant at first,” Newport said. “By the time the session was over, most were able to run and throw and catch the ball, and it just took off.”
Simplifying the rules, lacrosse is much like a combination of soccer, field hockey and ice hockey.
“The women’s sport is non-tackle, basically non-contact,” said Karen Aronson, an English teacher at Lake Forest High School who serves as the school’s women’s lacrosse coach. “The men’s game is completely padded, with helmets and pads, and they can actually tackle the ball . . . and each other. In our game, the goalie is the only one wearing pads, and the sticks we use don’t have a pocket like the men’s game.”
Who is better, and which game–men’s or women’s–is more exciting?
“Now, some of the men will get upset with me for saying this,” said Aronson, who like Martin learned the game growing up in Connecticut, “but the women’s game tends to be faster, and as a result, you need more skill and mental ability.”
Martin didn’t enter that debate. He is just glad potential athletes from both sexes have shown so much interest in the sport.
“It’s going to have a continued impact if we continue to get youngsters involved at a younger age because, as they grow up and go through school, they will want to play it, and it will become a more popular team sport once they get to high school,” Martin explained.
Why is Lake County a fertile ground for growth of the sport? Participants and coaches give different reasons.
“Maybe because of all of the facilities that are available in the county, especially the large number of parks,” Newport said. The indoor version can be played on a hockey rink or indoor football practice field.
“There is great access to the facilities,” Aronson said, “although you would think because there is so little cost involved–maybe $65 for a stick, ball and mouth guard and some of the other things involved–it would be growing (more) in some of the city schools, where some of the funding might be a little tighter.”
Steve Stenersen, executive director of the Maryland-based U.S. Lacrosse organization, isn’t surprised by the Lake County growth. He said the area long has been strong for ice hockey, field hockey and soccer.
“It would make sense, considering the facilities,” Stenersen said. “We’re seeing growth in the sport on the national level, and the area around Chicago is one of the fastest growing in the country as far as participants and the popularity of the sport.”
At present, Martin said, about 16 area high schools have some sort of boys or girls–or both–lacrosse teams. He expects that number to increase in the next several years.
Lacrosse is basically a “club” sport throughout Lake County rather than a “varsity” sport. The difference basically comes down to funding. Varsity sports have to be sanctioned by the Illinois High School Athletic Association before a school can elect to fully fund the sport, including travel and uniform expenses, according to Tim Albers, athletic director at Libertyville High School.
“There is growing interest in lacrosse, no question about it, but there is competition out there for playing fields and practice fields,” Albers said.
Because the sport hasn’t been sanctioned by the IHSA, only limited funding can be awarded to lacrosse because it is a “club” sport.
“That means they have to raise the funds for equipment, travel, paying the coach, things like that,” he added. “It could change, especially if the popularity continues to grow.”
The competition doesn’t bother Martin. In fact, he welcomes it.
“One of my complaints now is that kids these days are specializing in one sport and one sport only,” Martin said. “That doesn’t do them any good to continuously play hockey or soccer all year round. When I was growing up, we didn’t have indoor baseball clinics; you learned and played different sports.”
Naturally, Martin wants lacrosse to be one of those sports youngsters are exposed to, and he is confident that once they–and their parents–are, they will want to make it one of their major sports.
Penalties are similar to hockey and soccer: illegal checks, pushing, blocking and misconduct, slashing. The skills also are similar: The ball must be caught in the netting at the end of the stick, there are fast breaks and interceptions, and substitutions can be made during the actual plays. Faceoffs are used to put the ball in play at the start of each quarter or after a goal is scored.
And then there is the running.
“I’m into gymnastics in the winter,” said Amanda Bertelson, “and then in the spring, it’s lacrosse. A lot of my friends who might have played some of the other spring sports saw it and wanted to learn it. Some dropped out–there is a lot of running and conditioning involved. … But most of them thought it was interesting enough and fun enough, even though we just had a junior varsity team, to stick with it. Now they love it too.”
The amount of conditioning involved is actually an attraction, according to Aronson. “We draw a lot of girls who played field hockey who aren’t into soccer. We got some track runners and cross-country runners who love to run, and they love lacrosse,” she said. “It’s probably the fastest women’s sport there is.”
On the college level, lacrosse is played at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Illinois State University in Normal on the club level; the closest varsity team is the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, one of about 175 colleges that play the sport on the intercollegiate level. More than 1,500 high schools across the country involving more than 67,000 students participate in lacrosse.
“If you love action on the men’s or women’s side, if you love teamwork, if you like contact and the ball flying around in excess of 80 miles per hour and you don’t mind getting knocked (down),” Martin said with a smile, “you are going to love lacrosse.”
FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT THE GAME
Lacrosse is one of the oldest sports in North America–believed to have been played first by Native Americans in the mid-17th Century–but one of the newest in the Chicago area. The game is a combination of skills and rules from field and ice hockey, soccer and even basketball. Speed, rather than size, is a key element of success for both men’s and women’s lacrosse.
Women’s lacrosse has 12 players: a goalkeeper, five attacks and six defenders. Men’s lacrosse has 10 players: three defenders, three midfielders, three attacks and a goalie. The length of the game ranges from two 25-minute halves at the high school level to two 30-minute halves on the college level for females. For males, high school games are usually four 12-minute quarters, and college games consist of four 15-minute quarters.
Women’s lacrosse allows unrestricted movement of the 12 players, meaning they can play in both the offensive and defensive ends of the field. In men’s lacrosse, each team must keep at least four players, including the goalie, in its defensive half of the field and three in its offensive half. Midfielders can roam the entire field. U.S. Lacrosse recommends a field of 120 by 70 yards.
Players must use their crosses (sticks) to pass, catch and run with the ball, a hard rubber ball just slightly smaller than a baseball. Only the goalie may handle the ball. Players can gain possession of the ball by dislodging it from an opponent’s stick with a check (the amount of physical contact allowed differs in men’s and women’s games).
The game begins, as does each quarter or half, with a faceoff. There are both personal and technical fouls in lacrosse; personal fouls result in change of possession and players being sent to the sidelines for as long as three minutes.
A referee, umpire and field judge supervise field play.
Here are some lacrosse terms:
Marking: being within a stick’s length of an opponent.
Ground ball: a loose ball on the playing field.
Rake: a faceoff move in which a player sweeps the ball to the side.
Extra man offense: Similar to hockey’s power play, it occurs when a defensive player receives a penalty. Extra man defense results from a time-serving penalty when a offensive player is sent to the sidelines.
