Provincial championships, appearances at nationals and players moving on to play the sport at a high level once they’d graduated from the local organization was the norm.
Over the years, though, box lacrosse became the focus. And for the better part of a decade, the outdoor version of the sport has largely been an afterthought.
That’s all changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the myriad of provincial restrictions in place for safety reasons, the Moose Jaw Lacrosse Association decided to put a focus on the field game this season, given the ability to gather outdoors with fewer concerns than would be in place otherwise.
The first of their field lacrosse development camps took place on Thursday night at 1996 Summer Games Park, drawing around 60 players across five age divisions as well as a senior team.
“It looks good, we’re excited to get going finally,” said MJLAX president Cody Nidesh. “Things are starting to fall into place and as we go we kind of hope the restrictions loosen up and we can kind of advance our gameplan and even pick up some more registrations.”
The organization is fortunate in that there are a handful of coaches and current players in the community with strong backgrounds in the game. That includes former field standouts Kyle Dalgarno and Frankie Davalos along with current player Quinn Ingalls, who is back home after playing his first season with NCAA Division II Lander University.
“Kyle has been coaching our box lacrosse teams the last few years, but he has a passion for the field game, field is where his background really is,” Nidesh said. “Then Frankie went out to B.C. to play on scholarship back in the day, and of course there’s Quinn… just even for the mentorship side of things, too, having guys like that who have that kind of background for the kids to look up to, that’s important and really nice to have.”
Moose Jaw Mustangs coach Kyle Dalgarno and Lander University standout Quinn Ingalls lay out a plan for drill.The current format is as it sounds: development of the field game and learning how to play a sport that’s substantially different from the indoor version. Whether that turns into games of some sort is still up in the air, but definitely a potential.
“Obviously we’d like to get there, but for now we’ve advertised as a field lacrosse development camp, so we’ll go down that path first, and we have plans in place to adjust accordingly as things change,” Nidesh said.
The overall goal is to get things back to where they were in the past, when the likes of Sask Lacrosse Hall of Famer Ken Stewart, former professional field player David Mitchell, Dalgarno and Davalos were contending for provincial titles on the regular.
“Part of growing the game is building a succession plan for field lacrosse and what we can do for that exposure as well… the tough part right now is that box and field seasons run parallel,” Nidesh explained. “You look at Regina and Saskatoon, they have a box and field association, so they have different people running things and making sure things are successful, where the Swift Currents and Moose Jaws and P.A.s, all the smaller associations run it as one. It’s just how it works, but we’re hoping we’ll see the field game will grow here like we had in the past.”
The camps run Tuesday and Thursday evenings through July and August at the South Hill field.
