New areas are feeding on lacrosse

The sun is setting between the trees at Claude Moore Park in Sterling as children wearing bulky helmets and loose shoulder pads run around carrying sticks nearly as long as their gangly bodies.

Eight-year-old Matt Harris is among the pint-sized jitterbugs who are flipping a ball around, occasionally colliding into each other while trying to scoop groundballs. They sometimes fire at a goal, where the attendant wears something resembling a beekeeper’s mask and stands several feet below the orange crossbar.

“I like hitting,” Harris says while catching his breath after a 90-minute practice. “And it’s fun running around.”

The sport Harris enjoys will showcase itself starting today when an NCAA-record crowd of more than 60,000 is expected to fill Baltimore’s M&T; Bank Stadium for the college men’s final four. The Division I tournament already has received unprecedented television coverage, and the semifinals will be on ESPN2 with the final on ESPN on Memorial Day.

Despite the growth of the sport in Division I, the best places to see how much lacrosse has grown in a short time are at out-of-the-way sites like the one in Sterling. That’s where youth teams like the Eastern Loudoun Warriors under-9 squad have become fixtures not far from diamonds where baseball once was the main spring option.

Lacrosse is planting roots outside its established strongholds in Baltimore, Long Island and upstate New York while attempting to shed its perception as a sport exclusively for rich kids. The game is firmly established in Montgomery County and has spread across the river to Fairfax and beyond.

The sport has established pockets of popularity across the country in places like Colorado, Ohio and California. And the biggest growth appears to be near already established areas, as the boom has hit the Virginia counties of Loudoun, Prince William, Stafford and Spotsylvania.

Nationwide, there were 220,000 youth lacrosse players 15 and under in 2006, according to US Lacrosse, the sport’s governing body. Two years ago, 1,334 high schools played — more than four times as many as took the field in the mid-1980s. The Virginia High School League, which previously had recognized the sport, began sponsoring a state tournament for boys and girls for the first time last season.

It is the fastest growing sport in the country, according to both the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations. Seventeen states — up from 10 in 2000 — recognize or sanction lacrosse as a high school sport.

In Loudoun County just a decade ago, there were no high school teams or youth clubs. Today, all 10 public schools in Loudoun have varsity teams for both boys and girls. And this season the county fielded junior varsity squads for each gender for the first time.

The growth at that level largely resulted from “trickle-up” effects from the youth level. Until Loudoun made lacrosse a high school sport five years ago, players had no place to play once they finished youth programs.

Loudoun got its first youth lacrosse chapter nine years ago but was forced to split five years ago because it had too many participants. Now, they are loosely divided into groups east and west of Leesburg, and another division seems inevitable.

“Once you get over the 500- or 600-kid mark, it kind of gets out of control. We will have to split again,” says Eastern Loudoun commissioner Paul Ruffing, who coaches his son Alex on a U-13 team. “It’s an addictive sport. Any time you can put a stick in a kid’s hands and you can throw it, it’s a lot of fun.”

Eastern Loudoun, the newest chapter, fields 26 teams in four age groups for both boys and girls. The youngest is the under-9 group, and the oldest is the under-15, which feeds directly into the high schools. There are six girls’ teams.

The chapter is a member of the Northern Virginia Youth Lacrosse League, which was founded 20 years ago. There are 23 chapters in the NVYLL with 6,000 children on 328 teams. League commissioner Roger Smith says there is little room to grow in Fairfax and Arlington counties, but it continues to expand westward.

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