On Sept. 26, school district 278 had a board meeting at the district office about many topics. One of the topics that had been in consideration for some time was the possible sanctioning of Orono High School boy’s lacrosse.
Byt the end of the night, boys lacrosse was sanctioned and became a Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) lacrosse team. The Orono boy’s lacrosse team was first started in 2005 and entered the Minnesota Boys Scholastic Lacrosse Association (MBSLA – the club league for the state of Minnesota.) Since 2005, the team has had four consecutive winning seasons with a championship win in 2009 and two top five finishes in 2010 and 2011 in the MBSLA.
Joe Graphenteen was a senior at Mound-Westonka High School last year and a defense man on the team. He is now a freshman at the University of Saint Mary’s in Winona, Minnesota, he said, “senior season was great, [the team] had a great regular season, but just couldn’t put it together in the post-season to pull out another state championship.” Although he tore his ACL midway through the season, he claimed it was a memorable last season in high school lacrosse.
This consistent success in the MBSLA is one of the many factors contributing to the newly completed induction of the Spartans in the MSHSL. Other influencing factors include the MSHSL title-9 rule, the school budget and the MSHSL rules. The title-9 rule is a rule that states that every school must have as much opportunity for girls to participate in sports and clubs as boys.
Junior attackman, Garey Symington, was “super excited that lacrosse is sanctioned; [the team has] had a few great seasons the last few years and [he] can’t wait to see what will happen in the MHSHL .”
Other players have a similar outlook on this event. Junior defenseman Jack Stephenson thinks that “this will be an interesting season, [the team] may not do as well as [they] did last year but it’ll be a really good and fun experience.”
According to Bucky Mieras, the athletic director at Orono High School, “the timing [of sanctioning boys lacrosse] is good, they were club for a number of years; very successful, and… when you look at a natural progression for moving up from club to state high school league the timing is good.”
Being a club team for seven years has allowed the sport to grow not only at the high school level, but at the youth level as well. In 2007, Orono started a summer lacrosse practice team through community education and this evolved into the Orono youth lacrosse program that exists today.
In the past decade, lacrosse has been growing all across the country. The first three high school lacrosse teams were Philips Academy, Andover (Massachusetts), Philips Exeter Academy (New Hampshire) and the Lawrenceville School (New Jersey) and high school lacrosse has expanded exponentially from these original three schools. The U.S. now has over three thousand two hundred lacrosse teams from all fifty states.
Orono High School girls lacrosse became a club sport in 2005 as well and was sanctioned and brought into the MSHSL in 2009.
Connor Sample is the Variety Editor for The Spartan Speaks.
