By Bob Burrows, Hudson Star Observer
May 5, 2017
Jake Johnson was a freshman at UW-River Falls when he saw a couple of guys carrying lacrosse sticks around campus.
“I thought, what is that? It looks like a butterfly net,” the Webster native said. “Then I tried it and I fell in love with the game and I haven’t walked away since.”
Johnson went on to play four years of club lacrosse at UWRF before one of his teammates, Rich Grinstead, asked him to help coach a bunch of newbies with a fledgling lacrosse association in Hudson. Since then the Hudson Area Lacrosse Association has seen its membership grow from roughly 80 families in 2008 to over 350 today, with members from the Hudson, River Falls and New Richmond areas playing on boys and girls teams from 10-years-old through high school age.
“The growth has been tremendous,” said Johnson, head coach of the association’s varsity boys team. “I think people see how fun the sport is and how fast it is and they want more of it. It’s fast and it’s intense; that’s why people like it.”
Minnesota and Wisconsin have been hotbeds for youth and high school growth, with participation in Minnesota increasing 73 percent between 2009 and 2013, according to a 2014 US Lacrosse Participation Survey. That growth recently spurred UW-River Falls to announce it will add women’s lacrosse as its 17th varsity sport beginning in the 2018-19 academic year.
Johnson said Hudson’s proximity to the Gopher State helped fast track the sport’s growth on this side of the St. Croix River.
“We got lucky here because it is so popular in Minnesota,” Johnson noted. “Minnesota is probably a healthy five or six years ahead of us, realistically. They’ve had lacrosse longer and they’ve had state-sanctioned lacrosse longer. And our kids can go to camps and clinics over there and play summer ball with all the Minnesota kids, so we’re lucky just being in the right place.”
The Minnesota State High School League (MSHL) began sanctioning lacrosse in 2007 with 35 boys teams. In the last decade that number has doubled. And while the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) currently does not sponsor lacrosse, that hasn’t stopped its growing popularity in the Badger State.
Most of the sport’s growth is happening on the eastern side of the state. One example is the North shore of Milwaukee, where six years ago there was one co-op team that has since budded off into four separate programs.
According to the Wisconsin Lacrosse Federation, the state chapter of US Lacrosse and the governing body of lacrosse in Wisconsin, lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the state with over 6,500 boys and girls playing on youth and high school teams. Currently there are 52 boys and girls youth programs from third through eighth grade and 75 boys and girls high school JV and varsity programs.
With the closest WLF teams to Hudson located in Wausau and Tomah, that means a lot of travel for the Raiders. But last weekend teams from Waunakee and Wausau, as well as the Red River Valley team from Fargo, N.D., came to E.P. Rock and Newton Field for Hudson’s only home games of the season. The Raiders defended their home turf admirably by defeating Waunakee, 8-5, and Red River Valley, 14-3, Saturday and Wausau, 11-1, on Sunday.
“It was a great weekend for home games and our boys were very excited to be playing in Hudson; it was a welcome change,” Johnson said. “Usually we’re on the road for four, five hours every single game, so it felt great not to be cramped up in a car for that long.”
Hudson competed in the Minnesota Boys Scholastic Lacrosse Association until last year, when it joined the WLF and made it all the way to the state championship game before losing in overtime to Kettle Moraine. It was the first time since 2008 a team outside the Milwaukee or Madison area had played for the WLF state title.
Johnson said the team is looking forward to getting another shot this year.
“It was a heartbreaker last year, losing state in overtime and losing that many seniors,” he said. “But so many of these kids were a part of that team last year and they’re itching to get back. Kind of like just what the hockey team did.”
Hudson, currently 6-3, will hit the road again this weekend for Verona to play three games against Oregon, Green Bay and Verona. The WFL playoffs begin June 1 with the state championship game Saturday, June 10, at Carroll College in Waukesha.
The above is a repost from an article printed in the Hudson Star Observer
