Lacrosse fast, furious ... and fun
Dina Hughes was driving through the streets of Seven Fields when something caught her attention.
It was an innocent scene: young boys playing in a yard. But the sport they were playing caused Hughes, the Seneca Valley girls lacrosse coach, to take notice and smile.
They were playing lacrosse.
“You didn't see that four years ago,” said Hughes, who grew up in lacrosse-crazy Western New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. “I thought it was cute. I was used to seeing that back home, but not here.”
That scene is being played out more and more in the yards and fields of Butler County these days.
Lacrosse is enjoying an unprecedented boom across the country.
US Lacrosse, the national governing body of the sport in the United States, conducted a survey in 2009 to measure the growth of the game.
The organization found that lacrosse participation at the high school level has nearly tripled since 2001.
More than 200,000 high school athletes play lacrosse. In just one year, between 2008 and 2009, the sport gained 30,000 players at the prep level.
“This is just the start, I think,” said Butler girls lacrosse coach Annie Succop, who played the sport at Shady Side Academy and then at Lehigh University. “Any school can pick it up. I think it will continue to grow because it's a sport that if you get hooked, you don't get unhooked.”
Butler County has seen a similar growth compared to the rest of the country. In 2001, Butler High started a girls lacrosse program and Seneca Valley launched its boys and girls teams.
Most of the lacrosse activity then was restricted to private schools like Shady Side Academy and a sparse number of public schools in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.
Ten years later, Butler and Seneca Valley have successful boys and girls programs. Knoch has a girls team and will have a boys team ready to play in the spring of 2012.
A decade ago, few thought the sport would gain so much traction in Butler County.
Peet Poillon and his father, Neil, sat on the couch of their Evans City home and flipped on the television.On ESPN, there was a lacrosse game — the NCAA Division I title game — and they were hooked.An eighth grader at the time, Peet decided he wanted to play the sport, so he walked the halls of his school with a petition to start a lacrosse team.Meanwhile, Neil attended school board meetings to drum up support for lacrosse.Little did Peet know then that lacrosse would become his life.Poillon parlayed his love of lacrosse into opportunities at Howard Community College in Maryland, Ohio State University and finally at the University of Maryland.Poillon is now a star in Major League Lacrosse.He returned this spring to take over the boys lacrosse program that he helped start at Seneca Valley.“I think it's pretty special,” Poillon said. “I didn't realize what we created until I came back each year and saw lacrosse nets in yards and kids starting at the kindergarten level. We have more than 300 players in the (Seneca Valley Lacrosse Association) now.“The cool part is we inevitably changed people's lives, in a small way or big way,” Poillon added.The Butler girls program began in a similar fashion a decade ago.A group of girls played the sport during a summer gym class and wanted to form a team.Julie Baccanti, a physical education teacher at Butler High, took over the program in its second season.Games were played at Alameda Park then.“I'm lining the field and the lines weren't too straight,” Baccanti jokes.Now, the program enjoys the benefits of Art Bernardi Stadium and its FieldTurf surface.No need for chalk lines now.“We have a beautiful stadium and the school is great about letting us play on it and practice on it,” Succop said.The Butler boys program formed in 2002.When the teams were launched at Butler and Seneca Valley, the WPIAL did not recognize the sport. The teams played in the Western Pennsylvania Scholastic Lacrosse Association.In the spring of 2004, the WPIAL recognized girls lacrosse as a varsity sport. In the spring of 2008, the WPIAL added boys lacrosse to its stable of sports.Knoch formed its girls program in 2006 and is still searching for success.But it's not because of a lack of interest.The Knights were 2-15 a season ago and have only four players on the roster with lacrosse experience.The team, though, is 36 players strong.Knoch girls coach Garett Butler, who grew up in Easten Pennsylvania and attended Lehigh University, has seen the sport bloom in this part of the state in recent years.“I love the game,” said Butler, who is in his fourth season as the Knights' coach. “I try to get these girls excited about the sport. It's a fun activity, an exciting sport and that's why the numbers have grown and grown. People love to play it.“I love teaching the game,” Butler added. “I love teaching the rules. We've built up the numbers and it's just a matter of time before we get some experienced players.”The lacrosse boom has led to a rich landscape of talented players in Butler County.
The first time Allie Houk picked up a lacrosse stick, she had no idea how to use it.Catching the ball was a chore. Throwing and cradling the ball was even more challenging.“I knew nothing,” said Houk, now a senior on the Butler girls lacrosse team. “I didn't know how to catch the ball. I didn't know what position I was going to play, or what the positions were even called. It was totally new for me.”Houk began playing in the eighth grade. It didn't take long for her to find a home as a defensive specialist.By her sophomore year, she said she knew she wanted to play lacrosse at the college level.Houk has developed into one of the best defensive players in the WPIAL and will play at Division I Liberty University in Virginia next season.“I'm proud. It's Awesome,” Houk said. “It's going to be a learning thing for sure. I'm just excited to play with girls who have a lot of talent.”Seneca Valley senior Sam Struss also has committed to Liberty. But she earned her way there in a vastly different way than Houk.Struss is a scorer — she found the net more than 90 times last season. If she had her druthers, she would do nothing but shoot.“I tell people all the time that if it was just a shooting game, I'd do that,” Struss said, smiling.Struss began playing when she was in the second grade. Like Houk, she played on club teams to further hone her skills and now she's one of the most feared offensive players in the state.Houk and Struss are just two of several Butler County lacrosse players who are drawing attention from college coaches.When Poillon, a 2005 Seneca Valley graduate, was a player, he was one of the very few who went on to play in college.“I just wanted to play in college at the Division I level,” Poillon said.But that didn't happen right away. Even after scoring more than 400 points in his four-year career with the Raiders, no Division I schools came calling.It wasn't until he spent a year at Howard Community College that he finally got noticed.Just five years later, there's no such problem. Western Pennsylvania lacrosse is getting noticed.Former Seneca Valley attacker Jake McAndrew is playing at Mercyhurst College after winning the WPIAL Division I Player of the Year award last season. Former Raiders' goalie Brian Bohn received an offer to play at Robert Morris after his senior season and former SV standout Colin O'Donoghue is shining at Wingate University. A handful of others are playing at the college level.In addition to Struss, the Raiders' girls program will send Lauren Moran, Taylor Mayeda and Brenna Gallagher to college teams next season.“Western Pennsylvania is still getting there, but in the last four years, it's dramatically different, Hughes said. “I don't think you had four girls on the same team who were going to play in college at the Division I or Division II level four years ago.”
Makenzie Walker toyed with the idea for years.Finally, the Butler High senior swimmer decided to dive into another sport: lacrosse.“I always wanted to play,” Walker said. “I always enjoyed watching it.“Right now, there's a lot of lacrosse pride going on at this school,” she added. “I wanted to be part of the fun, be a part of the team.”Walker isn't alone. Each year, more and more male and female players have decided to give the sport a try for the first time, local lacrosse coaches said.The numbers are healthy at all five high school lacrosse programs in the county and continue to grow each year.But the coaches agreed that when it comes to getting kids interested in the sport, the younger the better.“They have to start young,” said Hughes, who said that at the high schools in and around her hometown of Cherry Hill, N.J., boys and girls have been playing lacrosse for more than 40 years. “When I started here, they didn't have youth programs. So, we got that started the last couple of years. The earlier they start, the better.”Butler has held camps for fourth-grade girls. Boys already start in the third grade in the Butler area.“All it takes is getting a group of kids to say, ‘We want to play,'” Succop said.Poillon wanted to play more than a decade ago. When he helped start the Seneca Valley boys lacrosse program, he had no idea what it would turn into.He finds little reason why the sport won't continue to flourish in Butler County.“It's the fastest growing sport in the country for a reason,” Poillon said. “It's fast-paced and fun to play. That's the bottom line. It's definitely growing by leaps and bounds and it will continue to.”
