A Texas Sized Effort to Grow the Game
As one of the nation’s largest metropolitan centers, Houston has always been fertile ground for the development of elite athletes in football, baseball, and basketball. Local program leaders are now working diligently to add lacrosse to that line-up.
Last year, Kevin Finn, a longtime Chicago resident and former collegiate lacrosse player and high school coach, relocated to Houston and established the Supreme Lacrosse club, seeking to serve as a catalyst for game development in the region. Finn wanted to provide increased lacrosse programming to attract the athletes that were migrating to the more established sports.
“We’re trying to get baseball and football players to try our sport,” Finn said.
Like other clubs, Supreme offers local players competitive middle school and high school travel teams to enhance their skill development. But Finn knows that there’s also a need to feed the pipeline in order to bring more athletes into the lacrosse experience.
Last summer, working collaboratively with USA Lacrosse, he began offering free community clinics to introduce lacrosse to new players. In addition, he leveraged the support of local lacrosse parents to make connections with school administrators, ultimately getting invited into Houston-area elementary schools to teach the game as part of the physical education curriculum.
Last fall, Finn tutored 51 class sessions across six different schools, introducing lacrosse to more than 2,100 boys and girls in grades 1-5.
“About 95-percent of the kids in the schools had never even heard of lacrosse,” Finn said. “But this is something we have to do to help lacrosse reach younger athletes. We’re trying to make an impact, but it requires a lot of time and effort.”
Also in Houston, the Kingwood Youth Lacrosse program, located in the city’s northeast suburbs, has utilized a different USA Lacrosse initiative – Flex6 Lacrosse - to help spur growth. Last spring, Kingwood offered this small-sided version of the game, played with fewer players on a smaller field, as a strategy to attract more youth participants.
“We called our version Texas Trios, with a non-contact 3-v-3 coed format, and the results were spectacular,” said program leader Josh Sullivan. “We adjusted our traditional boys’ and girls’ full-team practices by reducing one weekly practice and incorporating Trios into their schedule.”
The new approach yielded immediate dividends, some expected and some unexpected.
“The kids learned to move the ball quickly, spread the defense, and leverage speed, transforming their game approach,” Sullivan said. “We even had a number of kids eager to play goalie, which is often a position that’s hard to fill, after trying it in Texas Trios.”
Kingwood saw a 28-percent increase in participation, a number that Sullivan says is even more impressive given the fact that a large number of eighth graders had moved up to high school competition and that Kingwood eliminated its travel team for second graders, making Texas Trios their only option.
“We play Trios with only a stick and mouth guard and provide free sticks to our first-timers,” Sullivan said.
Meanwhile, Finn and other local leaders have adopted a top-down strategy this year to more efficiently reach the elementary school students. Rather than trying to meet the time demands of teaching all the classes, they recently hosted a workshop to teach the game to the physical education instructors.
The workshop attracted 84 teachers from across three school districts, giving them the fundamental understanding of lacrosse to teach the game to their students. USA Lacrosse provided the teachers with equipment and curriculum support, part of the nearly $25,000 in recent grants for Texas-based organizations.
“Training the P.E. teachers is a more efficient way of reaching the students,” Finn said. “Doing the instruction in all the schools required a tremendous amount of time and energy.”
“Kevin has taken the reins here and simply made this happen as we work to help rebuild and galvanize the Houston youth lacrosse community,” said Jesse Paynter, USA Lacrosse’s regional manager. “He has done tremendous work to contribute to the progress we are seeing for lacrosse down here."
Kevin Finn at a youth lacrosse clinic in Friendswood, TX
Lacrosse leaders also cite the very real impact of the Charlotte North effect as fuel for the game’s momentum in Texas.
“She’s a role model for the next generation of girls in Texas,” said Paul Jensen, who serves as president of USA Lacrosse’s Austin affiliate and has three daughters who play the sport. “She is inspiring more youth participation.”
Jensen also notes that the Sixes format of lacrosse is creating new state-wide opportunities for play.
“It’s very comparable to 7-Man football that is played in some parts of our state, helping to put teams in schools that don’t have enough players for traditional teams,” he said. “Sixes can help move the needle for lacrosse in Texas.”
Meanwhile, lacrosse leaders are also working behind the scenes on several other initiatives. One of the positive developments for the game’s future is the increased communication and collaboration between the two organizations that currently govern high school lacrosse, the Texas High School Lacrosse League (boys) and the Texas High School Girls Lacrosse League.
“More and more, we are seeing these two organizations aligning in strategy and in their sport development efforts,” said Jensen, who notes that the THSLL and THSGLL will be bringing their combined final four weekend to Austin in 2025.
That combined boys and girls high school championship event could also become the platform for celebrating the state’s newest initiative, the Texas Lacrosse Hall of Fame, which plans to announce its inaugural class in 2025.
The growing synergy for Texas lacrosse, demonstrating both a unified approach to the game’s development and a blossoming enthusiasm for greater participation, may also become the eventual catalyst for state sanctioning from the UIL, which governs high school sports in the state.
“I think we’re all optimistic that we’ll get to that point one day, but sanctioning is a slow moving process,” Jensen said. “If and when it happens, however, it will bring an incredible explosion for lacrosse in Texas.”
From metropolitan markets to smaller communities, the lacrosse boom appears to already be in motion these days across the Lone Star state.
“We’re working hard to solve the problems together,” Paynter said. “Game growth is the focus and priority for all of us in this state, and we know that the hard work is producing fruit.”