Recap of the 2014 Northern Lacrosse Season

The 2014 Northern Minnesota lacrosse season was one of firsts.  The first time a northern Minnesota

Duluth players celebrating Dan O' Connell's game winning goal

team advanced to the MBSLA State Championship, the first time a northern Minnesota varsity team defeated a MSHSL team, the first time a northern Minnesota player became an All-American and the first time a northern Minnesota player committed to play lacrosse at the NCAA Division 1 level.

The Duluth Chargers dominated the northern Minnesota lacrosse scene, moving through the regular season with the second undefeated regular season in a row.  Their season started with a bang, defeating defending MBSLA state champion Hudson in convincing fashion the first weekend of the season, 13-4.  After bulldozing their way through their regular season with one dominating win after the other, the Chargers from Duluth met traditional MSHSL power Totino-Grace on the Benild-St. Margarets field.  Duluth came away with an exciting 6-5 overtime win.  Duluth then followed that up with a pair of exciting wins over eventual MBSLA 3rd place team, Becker.  In the first contest, Duluth came away with a 12-11 overtime win.  In the second, Duluth again defeated Becker, 10-9 in

Duluth's Cooper Carlson

OT for the right to advance to the MBSLA State Championship game.  In the state championship game, Duluth would fall to St. Louis Park 12-6.  Duluth made the game interesting, tying it up early in the 3rd quarter 3-3 before faceoff man extraordinaire Carlos Suguenza decided to take over the game.  Northern Minnesota had 4 teams ranked in the MBSLA top 10 to end the season. 

Northern Minnesota also saw their first all-american when Duluth midfielder Cooper Carlson was named to the team.  Northern Minnesota also placed 3 players on the all-state team when Duluth's Cooper Carlson, midfielder Bryce Holak and defenseman Seamus Mackinaw were named to the team.  Duluth's attack Dan O' Connell and Proctor's attack Luke Hannan were named to the

Duluth Midfielder Bryce Holak

all-state Honorable Mention team.

And, in the Fall of 2014, northern Minnesota saw it's first NCAA Division I recruit verbally commit to a college when Duluth's junior midfielder Bryce Holak announced his commitment to play for the University of Massachusetts - Lowell.  With this announcement, more players are seeking to improve their game and recruiting prospects by participating on select lacrosse teams and working to be the next northern Minnesota player to commit to a high level NCAA university. 

Lacrosse is continuing to grow in northern Minnesota and the prospects for more exciting lacrosse in the north are very high for the coming season.  Skill levels are improving, more players are playing and lacrosse will soon be an officially sanctioned sport at the high school level in northern Minnesota.  Here's to another exciting lacrosse season in 2015!

Lacrosse - America's Fastest Growing Sport!

Lacrosse Is Actually America’s Fastest-Growing Sport

In the past decade, participation in high-school lacrosse has exploded. Maybe it’s really America’s sport of the future.

posted on June 30, 2014, at 5:20 p.m.

John Templon

BuzzFeed News Reporter

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More Americans than ever are watching the World Cup, making soccer seem like sport’s flavor of the month. But at the high school level, it’s a different sport that’s truly taking off.

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

Between the 2008-09 and 2012-13 school years, participation in high-school lacrosse grew 19 percent among girls (to more than 77,000 players) and 15 percent among boys (to nearly 102,000 players), according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations analyzed by BuzzFeed. Over the past decade, the trend is even stronger, with participation more than doubling over that time.

Among sports with at least 10,000 high schoolers, lacrosse has had the highest growth rate since 2009. Other growth sports include 8-player football (up 12 percent), cross country (up 8 percent for both boys and girls), soccer (up 8 percent for girls, up 7 percent for boys), and girls bowling (up 7 percent).
“There are two main reasons for the trend,” said Rick Burton, the Falk Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University, about the rise in popularity of lacrosse. “One is that lacrosse is being developed as a gender neutral sport. It’s a virtually identical game between men and women. Two, it’s an active, contemporary game. It’s not based on set plays with limitations of where people can play.”
Despite lacrosse’s reputation as a preppy, Northeast-centric sport, the sport grew the most in the Midwest and South. Between 2009 and 2013, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio saw the largest percentage increases in participation. And there’s an opportunity for much more growth: In 32 states, fewer than 1,000 students played high-school lacrosse during the 2012-13 school year, according to the NFHS data.

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

“It’s been a major sport in upstate New York and the Baltimore area for the past 40 years,” Burton said. “There are now a critical mass of people who were on the East Coast moving to the Midwest.”

In raw numbers, of course, lacrosse still has a long way to go before catching up with soccer — which sported approximately four times as many high school players as lacrosse last school year — not to mention football (1,086,627 boys in 2012-13), basketball (538,676), or baseball (474,791).
The explosive growth of lacrosse seems to have trickled up to the collegiate level, too. Sixty-four colleges started new lacrosse programs in 2012-13, according to the NCAA.