You used to have to travel cross country to see good lacrosse. Now, Colorado is good lacrosse country.
In 1999, when lacrosse became sanctioned as a sport by the Colorado High School Activities Association, a total of 2,141 boys and girls participated. This year, the number was 5,431 as the boys championship game approaches Saturday.
Lacrosse generated few headlines back in the day, but the sport is becoming front-page news across much of the area now. Denver has two professional lacrosse teams (Colorado Mammoth, Denver Outlaws) and the University of Denver is playing in the NCAA quarterfinals this weekend under legendary coach Bill Tierney.
Coaches such as Tierney are finding quality players for the future right here in Colorado. Nobody better exemplifies that than Fort Collins High School’s Ryan LaPlante, a goalie.
LaPlante was Tierney’s first recruit when he came to the school two years ago. Not bad for someone coming out of a high school program that didn’t exist 15 years ago.
“It’s a pretty amazing thing. We started our program in 1996 in a horse pasture,” Fort Collins coach Carey Smith said. “The closest program to us was in Boulder. Now we’ve got teams in Windsor and Loveland, and I think Greeley will get one soon. Half the battle up here used to be just getting people to realize lacrosse exists. We don’t have that problem now.”
LaPlante, who will enroll at DU this fall on a full-ride lacrosse scholarship, was one of those young northern Colorado kids who didn’t know the sport existed. After seeing Mammoth games as a grade-schooler, however, he became intrigued and found he loved playing the sport. Now, he’s going to play for Tierney, who won six NCAA championships at Princeton and is considered one of the greatest coaches of any sport at any level.
“I was through the roof (when Tierney offered the scholarship). Very, very excited,” LaPlante said. “To be able to play lacrosse still right here in the great state of Colorado, I mean, it’s awesome. I can’t wait to be there.”
While big-school teams such as Cherry Creek, Kent Denver and Arapahoe continue to capture the majority of hardware, the competition is becoming tougher throughout the state. Chaparral, a high school in Parker, wasn’t founded until 1997, but this year placed a boys lacrosse team in the state quarterfinals. Coach Mike Magrin said more kids than ever are flocking to the sport.
“The sport is just contagious,” Magrin said. “It’s fast-paced, it’s physical and the learning curve isn’t too steep for a ninth-grade player who’s never played the game to pick it up and be successful.”
Colorado used to be considered a wasteland for college lacrosse recruiters, but no more. So far this year, 13 boys and eight girls in the state have committed to Division I programs. LaPlante has a Fort Collins teammate, 6-foot-4, 230-pound defender Ethan Kitchell, who will play at Vermont. A kid Kitchell’s size in the past might have played football as he got older, but lacrosse is attracting more and more big, rugged athletes.
“The sport is just expanding more to the West. It’s not all just on the East Coast now,” LaPlante said. “And what’s happening more now is, kids are playing it at younger ages here. That’s going to be a big factor in the sport getting even bigger in Colorado. The youth programs are where it all starts.”
Arapahoe lacrosse coach Guy Cerasoli says he’s noticed even more kids asking about the sport just in the past week, after DU won an NCAA Tournament game at home against Villanova televised on ESPNU.
“There’s no question, the more kids see a sport on TV and see it in the headlines, the bigger it’s going to get in the future,” Cerasoli said. “What’s going on at DU, with a legend like Bill Tierney coming to coach there, that can only mean good things for lacrosse in Colorado.”
At Fort Collins, Smith said participation in lacrosse this year was up nearly 25 percent over last year, from 150 kids to about 190.
Smith said lacrosse at Fort Collins is not funded by the school, and the roughly $50,000 per year it takes to field the boys and girls teams must be raised privately.
“With the economy the way it’s been the last few years, that hasn’t been easy,” Smith said. “But there is a real passion for it, among the kids and the parents.”
Smith said his “a-ha” moment that lacrosse had arrived in Colorado came not long ago, in a restaurant in Evergreen after his second-grade son had finished a tournament there.
“They had lacrosse on, with DU playing Fairfield. There were like 10 people in the restaurant yelling and screaming at the TV,” Smith said. “That was pretty cool. That’s something you probably would never have seen around here in the past.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com
