Gavin Vahl, a Carl Sandburg High School senior on the school district’s cooperative lacrosse team, said in seventh grade he nearly decided to go to Marist High School to be on its lacrosse team because it felt like an established, credible team.
But he said the opportunity to be on a districtwide team and play with students from across three high schools drew him to Sandburg. Five years later he is graduating with a tight-knit team who he said has made him a better player and taught him lessons in discipline and hard work, he said.
Vahl’s team is one of several cooperative teams set to be disbanded next fall due to an Illinois High School Association policy that disqualifies large cooperative teams from competing at the state level, according to Orland High School District 230 officials.
The lacrosse team will be split into individual school teams, without a junior varsity team, at Sandburg and Victor J. Andrew High School, according to Superintendent Robert Nolting.
Amos Alonzo Stagg High School will not have a lacrosse team, Nolting said.
Vahl said he has seen more and more players recently choose to attend Catholic high schools to play on the lacrosse teams as the sport has become more popular. He said he worries that without the cooperative team, the sport at area public schools might become a “mess.”
“I feel like this would just like cripple lacrosse in the area, maybe not of the sport itself but the participation,” he said. “Without that District 230 platform, there’s going to be no desire … it just doesn’t have that hook or, like, that attention that ‘hey, we’re legit, you should come play for us’ like other schools have.”
Nolting said the decision to split up the team was based on feedback from the school’s athletic departments after the IHSA policy was approved in December.
The district also decided to split the girls wrestling co-op team into an independent program at Andrew High School, with a cooperative team at Sandburg and Stagg high schools that cannot compete at the state tournament, Nolting said.
Nolting said the district considered participation numbers, available resources, financial considerations and the impact of the restriction on post-season competition participation when making decisions for all cooperative team programs.
Nolting also said he asked the athletic departments to schedule a time to discuss and reconsider their decisions in the coming weeks due to concerns.
Vahl said the cooperative team pulled talented players into one spot so they could help and improve each other. With the split, he said most of the team’s defense would be at Andrew while the team’s offense would be at Sandburg.
These teams would also not include a junior varsity level, which Vahl and his brother Mason Vahl, a sophomore, said contributed to their development as players. They also said lacrosse is a very physical sport, and they worried about the safety of new, young players going against older lacrosse players committed to division one colleges.
“I feel like getting that time to play with underclassmen and playing against area junior varsity teams, it helps a lot for learning to understand the game and learning to succeed in it,” Mason said.
District 230 parent Howie Jablecki said players who attend Stagg will be left without access to the lacrosse.
“A handful of kids are going to lose their ability to play the sport,” Jablecki said. “The point of a co-op is to allow kids to participate in sports where a single high school can not necessarily support a team.”
Jablecki said he and other team parents, coaches and athletes have several concerns about the changes, including the availability for practice space and costs for new equipment, uniforms and coaches for teams at each school.
Jablecki also said he worries about the future of the sport because the south and southwest suburban lacrosse teams mostly rely on cooperative teams, compared to the “powerhouse” lacrosse teams at individual schools in Chicago’s north suburbs.
“This is not about competing in the state tournament,” he said. “This is about allowing the sport of lacrosse to continue to grow in this area, one where the majority of programs are, in fact, co-ops. It’s about allowing the players the ability to develop through a multilevel program and allowing all players in the district an opportunity to compete in this sport.”
The IHSA policy was passed in December in an effort to address large cooperative teams, or “super teams,” that may have a high rate of success at the state tournament due to team size, according to IHSA officials.
The policy prohibits cooperative teams from competing for team awards and in the IHSA state series if combined enrollment at the high schools in the co-op exceeds 3,500 students.
This rule applies to all six cooperative teams across Sandburg, Stagg and Andrew high schools beginning July 1, Nolting said in February. The teams are girls gymnastics, girls wrestling, girls and boys lacrosse and girls water polo.
Matt Troha, IHSA associate executive director, said a school representative, not an IHSA official, wrote the policy. He said there may have been some unintended consequences that people did not think about or were not aware of when they voted for or proposed the policy.
“I would definitely say that it’s, you know, it’s disappointing to hear,” he said. “We’re an organization built on creating participation opportunities, and that’s what he hope to do.”
Troha said he has heard discussions about ways to amend the policy to mitigate these unintended consequences, but that amendment process does not begin until October, and any changes would not affect the 2026 and 2027 school year.
Gavin Vahl said the cooperative team has been important to the Orland Park and Tinley Park area in his four years on the team.He said one of his favorite team moments was winning the sectional tournament against tough competition his freshmen year.
“The co-op gives the community a team, and without that, like splitting up, we would still have teams, but they wouldn’t be competitive,” he said. “They wouldn’t attract the amount of attention to local kids like it does right now.”
awright@chicagotribune.com
