“It was a real ramshackle operation,” laughed John Reed, a DLC founder and the club’s president.
That first team started a rapid expansion. In seven years, the single group has grown into nine area clubs with dozens of age-group teams and hundreds of players.
The Miami Valley has mimicked explosive lacrosse growth nationally. From 2000 to 2009, lacrosse participation increased by 131.1 percent from 518,000 to nearly 1.2 million, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. No other team sport grew by more than 26 percent during the same span.
Organized lacrosse in Ohio has existed since at least the 1970s with high school clubs in the Columbus area. But before 2004, the sport was not played in a sustained form in the Miami Valley.
Since, schools or areas that split from the Dayton Lacrosse Club to form their own clubs include Springboro, Centerville, Miami Valley School, Alter, Lebanon, Chaminade Julienne and Bellbrook.
Many of those clubs will play in the Ohio High School Lacrosse Association state tournament beginning this week as the sport continues its effort to earn sanction by the Ohio High School Athletic Association.
Two area schools — Miami Valley School and Centerville — have added lacrosse as a varsity sport. Others hope to gain such standing in the future.
Area enthusiasts say they will continue to search out new players, coaches and officials while gauging interest in areas without their own clubs.
“It’s been amazing,” said Allen Ely, the Centerville boys varsity coach who started with the Dayton Lacrosse Club in 2005. “We just had a home game the other night, and kids are coming out, the crowds are big. Anybody who comes and watches says, ‘Wow, it’s so fast-paced, full-contact and very few stoppages.’
“They see it’s a very fun game.”
Recognizing a niche
Back in 2002, 64 boys and girls high school lacrosse teams and 3,405 prep players populated Ohio. The Dayton area had zero teams with players traveling to other areas to participate.
Around that time, Reed moved back to the area from northern Virginia, where his son picked up the game from his peers.
“My son grew up playing baseball at Patterson Park,” Reed said. “We moved out to Virginia, and his new friends said, ‘Forget baseball, try this,’ and handed him a lacrosse stick.”
Finding no organized lacrosse in Dayton, Reed gauged interest in forming a team. His quest led him to Patti Jo Vore, another Miami Valley resident who returned to the area after living in northern Virginia and had a son who played the game.
Vore was a mother who once organized a 90-member chess club at her sons’ school so they could compete in the game. A new area brought a new challenge.
Reed and Vore found their first coach, Harry Calcutt, because he was a neighbor of one of Reed’s friends. The retired Air Force colonel played lacrosse for decades and was anxious to help.
Vore found another coach because he noticed her wearing a lacrosse T-shirt one day and struck up a conversation. She recruited two more when she approached them at a local restaurant, recognizing that they were football coaches, and asked if they wanted to try lacrosse.
The result of that patchwork of players, coaches and parents was, finally, an organized team in 2004.
“The first year we had enough kids, and I’d say, ‘It’s 300 bucks for equipment,’ so they’d say, ‘Do we have a team?’ Then I’d say, ‘Buy your equipment, and we can have a team,’ ” Vore said.
Within several years, supporters from Springboro noticed the area appeared to have enough participants to form its own club, so it split off from the Dayton Lacrosse Club. Other communities followed that model.
“We’re building the credibility of the sport in this area,” said Christy Garrett, president of the Springboro Lacrosse Club, which has grown to 17 teams and nearly 300 players. “Kids who used to play soccer or baseball are trying something new.”
Going varsity
Ken Laake interviewed for the job of Miami Valley School athletic director four years ago. During his sit-down with new headmaster Peter Benedict, he quickly learned a priority.
Benedict wanted a lacrosse program.
“We’re a small school with no football, so the only helmeted sport we had at the time was softball,” Laake said.
Benedict brought a history in the sport. A south Florida native, he learned lacrosse while attending a prep school in the Philadelphia area, and he carried that passion to other academic stops. Before MVS, Benedict jump-started a program at the Louisville Collegiate School.
Within two years, Miami Valley boasted the area’s first high school varsity lacrosse team. The program, founded at the middle school level in 2008 before it expanded to high school in 2009, has grown to about 120 players on five boys and girls teams.
Benedict said many colleges that Miami Valley graduates attend include lacrosse programs, and the sport matches the school’s values.
“We can play much bigger schools,” said Benedict, who serves as an assistant coach for the high school boys team. “We punch way above our weight class in the lacrosse world.”
MVS built the sport in its community by inviting the Dayton Lacrosse Club to its fields and hosting University of Dayton club team games. The first UD game at MVS, against Miami University, was played in front of a still-learning crowd.
“There were about 500 people here, and 20 in the crowd were tutoring everyone else on the game,” Laake said.
“Then we had a game (Wednesday) out at Fenwick, and they’re one of the bluebloods, they’ve had a club team forever. Our crowd was intelligently speaking about the game, things happening on the field, what camps they were sending their kids to. I thought, ‘Wow, we’ve come a long way.’ ”
Future of lacrosse
Last June, the Centerville boys lacrosse team was runner-up in the Ohio High School Lacrosse Association club division. Just three years after forming a program, Ely was named a state coach of the year.
A month later, the school awarded varsity status to the team, although as a compromise the club still pays its own expenses. The Centerville girls program earned varsity status last month.
Other clubs hope to follow that model. Unlike Miami Valley, which created a varsity program, most area schools start at the club level and advance.
The next step, lacrosse supporters say, is producing enough varsity programs to become part of the OHSAA.
Paul Balcerzak, commissioner of the OHSLA, said the organization includes 116 teams (24 at the club level). The OHSAA requires 150 programs in a sport before it will consider addition, he said.
Balcerzak said the OHSLA reorganized recently to meet OHSAA standards for divisional separation and rules regulation to make a possible transition easier.
“We’re kind of where soccer was 15 or 20 years ago,” Balcerzak said. “We all see what happened with soccer. It took off.”
Meanwhile, more area communities are forming or considering their own clubs. Last year, about 20 kids from Bellbrook were part of the Dayton Lacrosse Club, so parents in that area decided to host a clinic and gauge further interest. About 70 kids showed up.
Inspired by the numbers, they formed the Bellbrook Lacrosse Club, which includes five teams and will expand with a high school-age group next year.
“The growth has been explosive, that’s the best term I can use,” said Vince Molseed, director of the Bellbrook club. “It’s just a matter of pulling people in and getting people to help out. Who can do what? Who’s willing to learn? Because the interest is clearly there.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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