Photograph by George Sakkestad
Kevin Darchuck charges up the field during a four-day lacrosse camp at Redwood Middle School in early April.
Lacrosse Country
A couple of Redwood Middle School teachers, both East Coasters, bring the game of lacrosse to Saratoga
By Oakley Brooks
Photographs by George Sakkestad
Standing on the soccer field at Redwood Middle School in early April, the athletes were gathered around Brian Senior and Joe Christie: Swimmers who'd left their goggles at home for the week to dabble in this four-day, spring-break sports camp.
Little leaguers, too, taking a rest from the diamond. Hockey players, wrestlers, soccer stars--all taking a peek at what to them was a brand-new sport: lacrosse.
And the two coaches tried to draw on the little athletes' pasts, morphing the old sports into a new one.
"Anybody seen 8-and-under soccer?" asked Christie, a Redwood teacher in coaching garb.
"Yeah," a couple of youngsters shot back.
"What's it look like?"
"Blob ball," they replied.
"That's what we're trying to avoid. Keep it spread out--keep the ball moving." Christie sent some demonstration players into their spots to fling a few passes around with metal and plastic sticks--modern approximations of the wooden-leather set-ups European settlers found American Indians using in the Northeast more than five centuries ago.
Then Senior, Redwood's athletic director, stopped the ball.
"On defense, you're going to use a help-defense, very much the same as in basketball," Senior said.
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Today's lacrosse sticks are a modern cousin of the leather and wood sticks first used by American Indians.
Senior and Christie, both East Coast transplants, were hoping to see a couple of the converts to their sport, which is deeply rooted in the prep schools, suburbs, and colleges of the Northeast and is just barely budding as a high school sport in the Bay Area.
"It's tough getting people away from baseball after they've been playing it for eight years," said Christie, who played lacrosse for Drexel University in Philadelphia. "And basketball and soccer have so saturated this area."
Easterners describe those who convert from baseball as "being bitten by the lacrosse bug."
At Christie and Senior's coed camp recently, kids from Redwood, as well as Fisher and C.T. English middle schools in Los Gatos and several local elementary schools, were at least temporarily under the spell of the sport.
Hopping into line for a run through some shooting drills, Spencer Sevilla, 13, sported a pair of Stanford gloves--on loan from Christie, who coaches the Cardinal men's team.
"I got into it because it's so different," said Sevilla, a Redwood eighth-grader who wrestles for the school.
Later, in a live three-on-three scrimmage, a group of Sevilla's classmates circled around the smallish, rectangular goal trying to break free for pass. When the ball dropped out of someone's stick, a mini-scrum gathered around the ball, sticks whacking and bodies hipping each other.
Fourteen-year-old Lisa Chu screamed halfheartedly from the middle of the pack, "This is so violent, I don't like this anymore."
Moments later, teammate Henry Barmeier, 14, found her all alone in front of the goal and fed Chu with a pass that she caught and shot all in one motion. Watching from the side, Christie and kids from across the sports spectrum raised an eyebrow in appreciation of Chu's one-timer.
"Oh!" she yelled, running for a high five.
It's not uncommon to see fast-paced play in the 10-per-side men's game or 12-per-side women's game. Both tend to alternate between end-to-end rushes--like hockey--and the half-court set play of a basketball game.
"I'd definitely play in high school if there was a team," said Chu, a competitive swimmer, at one point during the camp. Two of Chu's buddies standing nearby, Kelly Burke, 14, and Shaweta Balakrishnan,14, voiced agreement.
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Lisa Chu (left) and Shaweta Balakrishnan battle for the ball during a scrimmage.
Squad effort
Saratoga High School sophomore Andy Kao waded through the campers with a stick in his hand and his eyes probably getting wider behind his shades.
Kao plays for a club team in Palo Alto, and earlier this school year he made a first pass at starting a high school team here in Saratoga. He drew close to 20 Saratoga High students to two meetings about a possible squad, including a handful of girls. Kao also rallied a parent to volunteer for coaching duties.
The effort floundered for lack of field space in the city; Saratoga High School athletic director Mike Navrides said his two fields big enough to hold a lacrosse field (roughly the size of a football field) were filled up during the spring lacrosse season by track and softball teams. And Kao couldn't nail down a field at any of the other grade schools in town.
But Navrides recognizes the interest in Saratoga--in addition to the camp, Senior also generated some intrigue by playing lacrosse with his P.E. classes at Redwood.
"It's a hot topic right now, and the high schools will just follow the middle schools," said Navrides.
Mark Peck fishes a ball out of the goal.
Photograph by George Sakkestad
And at the camp, Kao looked out at the field and saw a whole new pack of potential players headed to the corner of Herriman Avenue and Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road in the next couple of years.
"All those eighth-graders at Redwood are coming over," he said.
In the region, interest has been building through a network of club teams and leagues. Kao's Tomahawks team takes players from high schools around the South Bay--Menlo-Atherton, Bellarmine Prep, Woodside, and Westmont, to name a few. They play teams from Pebble Beach up to Novato and Marin County. And the other Tomahawk teams include boys from the fourth grade up and girls from the sixth grade up.
Last year, the California Interscholastic Federation decided it would sanction the sport, and high schools around the Bay Area have been putting together their own teams in recent years in anticipation of the Central Coast Section sponsoring official leagues in the near future. Navrides said the CCS is waiting for the number of teams to reach a critical mass.
Navrides figures it will take some time for Saratoga parents and kids to solve the riddle of field space in the city, and to convince the school district to spring for coaching salaries, before a team gets off the ground here.
"We're probably still a couple of years away," he said.
Chris Rea (left, with helmet) is congratulated by teammates after scoring a goal to win a tie-breaker in the lacrosse camp's final competition
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Live oaks and lax?
At the end of the morning camp at Redwood, kids swept to the edges of the field in search of stray balls, then picked up a packet of rules and strategy before getting ready to head home.
Thirteen-year-old Scott Darchuck gathered his younger brother, Kevin, a Little League all-star wearing a Colorado Rockies hat, and they left the field, dropping their sticks into a pile of others as they walked by.
The sticks were a mix of Christie's, Senior's and some loaners from the local chapter of United States Lacrosse, Inc. Equipment is another hurdle to getting into "lax"--a stick runs $40 or $50 a pop. Equipment for the heavier-checking men's game, where players don helmets and padding up the arms and shoulders, can run into the $300 range.
"Initially, parents are turned off by the investment in equipment," Christie said. "But when you look at a sport like hockey, there's no comparison."
Several Saratoga kids did show up at the camp with their own sticks--an encouraging sign for Christie and Senior. In backyards and against garages and walls up and down the East Coast, kids hone their stick skills--including the "cradle" motion, which lets a player sprint up and down the field while keeping the ball in the pocket of the stick--long before they ever step onto a field.
After the campers cleared the Redwood field, Christie, Senior, and Kao went to one goal to throw around and work on Kao's shot. Senior tossed balls for his burly dog.
Kao took a dozen passes on the right side of his body, and then hurled the ball at the goal each time. Then he took some on his left side. The missed shots sailed to the base of the coast live oak at the end of the field, beneath the backdrop of the foothills.
"Use your legs more," Christie suggested.
Three lacrosse players, tooling in the midday sun--a potential toehold for a new game in Saratoga.
For more information on lacrosse programs contact:
Northern California Junior Lacrosse Association, www.ncjlax.org
Tomahawks Lacrosse Club,650.599.5096, www.tomahawkslacrosse.org
Joe Christie/Brian Senior, 408.867.3042
Stanford Men's Lacrosse, www.stanfordlax.com
Stanford Women's Lacrosse, gostanford.fansonly.com/sports/w-lacros.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
