Opinion: Lacrosse breaks new ground in Kansas

It’s unlikely the Kansas State High School Activities Association will sponsor a state lacrosse tournament anytime soon.

But that doesn’t mean the sport isn’t growing by leaps and bounds locally.

Want proof? You should have been at Blue Valley West on Saturday afternoon where the Olathe Hawks and host Jaguars lacrosse squads met in the first Kansas High School Lacrosse championship.

“This has been a long time coming,” Olathe coach Joel Henning said. “Us breaking away from the MSLA (Missouri State Lacrosse Association) is a big step. It definitely puts in a place to explode our growth now.”

Until this spring, Kansas lacrosse clubs rode the coattails of its brethren across the state line, but those days are over.

It’s the first step toward legitimacy for the growing sport.

In addition to BV West and Olathe, there are four other varsity programs in the state — Shawnee Mission East, SM South, St. Thomas Aquinas and a Wichita squad. Leavenworth also has a lacrosse program, but it only competes at the junior varsity level.

Over the next few years, more clubs are sure to spring up — and more fans are sure to turn out.

Of course, probably close to 100 people — maybe more, I’ve never been good at such estimations — already were on hand despite chilly, dreary conditions and the threat of rain Saturday afternoon.

“It’s great that it’s getting big enough to have something like this tournament going on,” said Hawks goalie and captain Dakota Nichols, a senior at Olathe Northwest. “Hopefully, it will keep going.”

The Olathe Hawks squad walked off the field with a somber gait after losing 10-4.

BV West, which finished the season 15-0, nabbed the title with a particularly strong fourth-quarter performance.

Olathe actually led thanks to a goal by Logan Smith, a sophomore at ONW, just 73 seconds into the first quarter.

The Jaguars scored the next three goals before Trey Freeman, a junior at Olathe East, pulled one back for the Hawks, who trailed 4-2 at halftime.

BV West stretched the lead to 6-2 with goals 12 seconds apart midway through the third quarter, but Brett Wilson, a freshman at St. James Academy, and Dan Gallagher, a captain and junior at East, pulled the Hawks back within 6-4 after three quarters.

In the end, the Jaguars scored a couple goals 24 seconds apart and a few minutes later netted two more goals in the span of 28 seconds.

“Lacrosse is a game of emotion and we let them get going too much,” Gallagher said. “When a team gets on a roll, it can be hard to shut them back down.”

That outburst propelled BV West to the six-goal win.

“We came closer every time we’d played them, so we hoped this would be the peak of our season,” Nichols said. “We just didn’t quite get there. We’re a good comeback team, so I thought we had it, but we didn’t do a good job recovering in the fourth quarter.”

The truth is that no matter what the scoreboard said when the final horn sounded, there were no losers.

Eventually, I have no doubt that lacrosse will be a recognized sport with a KSHSAA-sanctioned championship game. I have no clue when that might happen, and obviously close to a dozen more programs must spring up before it’s realistic.

Lacrosse still has a way to go to gain serious traction in Kansas, but the first tangible step came Saturday.

All 47 kids on the Olathe Hawks roster are ground-breakers.

Twenty years from now, hopefully they can look back on that first state title game with tremendous pride and satisfaction. Even if nobody remembers the score.