Nebraska Lacrosse Summit Meeting Notes

Meeting Date: June 4th, 2016

Meeting Place: TD Ameritrade

Attendees (in order of signing in) :

NAME / ASSOCIATION
Lori Kilstrom / NELAX President
Jon Pohlmann / NELAX Vice President
Todd McMartin / NELAX Treasurer
Tracy Nedd / NELAX Secretary
Gwen Newsome / Omaha Lacrosse Club
Teresa Wagelie / Millard West
Ki Roth / Millard West
Shauna Smith / Elkhorn South
Kathy Fisher / Elkhorn South
Cheri VanHolland / Papillion Knights
Doug Wiens / Millard West
Debbi Wiens / Millard West, Youth
Aaron Kersigo / Westside
Curtis Oie / Lincoln Youth Lax
Brian Kitien / Lincoln Youth Lax
Brian Howe / Liincoln Lax
Jon Backstrom / West Des Moines Lax
Bob Hoffer / Officials
Jake Schneider / Burke
Susan Bruggeman / Burke
Chris Hantec / Burke
Ann Mausbach / Creighton Prep
Tim Mausbach / Creighton Prep
Steve Haney / Creighton Prep
Ted Dondlinger / Westside

The Agenda had three main sections:

1 - Current State updates on Youth and HS lacrosse from Gwen Newsome (OLC), Jon Pohlmann (Lincoln), Jon Backstrom (WDM), Gwen Newsome (Girls HS) and Lori Kilstrom (Boys HS)

2 – Supporting the Game updates from OLC, NELAX, Officials, and Parent Boards

3 – Growing the game. Updates on what other lacrosse organizations are doing in Minnesota and California to grow the sport.

Below are the notes from these sections. One change in agenda though. Gwen Newsome needed to leave the meeting early, so we combined her sections into one discussion at the beginning of the meeting.

Current State

Notes from Gwen Newsome’s report:

Gwen gave the following OLC update on Youth programs. OLC started in 2011, as a purely rec lacrosse program. The Prime program never competes with OLC. Kids progress from OLC to high school. In 2011, OLC had 255 kids. In 2016, there were 335 kids registered. Currently, the U13 group is the largest. Gwen gave numbers on how many youth kids there are coming up for each high school team, for many of the high school teams. There is also a Fiddlestick league for the little kids. She had about 12 to 30 kids in those activities last year. Also, NorthStar was a big success. Those kids will eventually go to Northwest and North high schools, so good things will happen there soon. As a note, she mentioned that 10 years ago, lacrosse in Nebraska started with 4 high school teams. The sport definitely needs to grow!

Notes from Jon Pohlmann’s report:

Jon stated that the Parks & Recs and YMCA have Youth programs. There are four divisions: 8th grade, 6th grade, 5th grade and 3rd grade. They started with a 7 on 7 program, but have since formed a 10 on 10. The U13 level has enough players, but there is not enough for a U11 team. The U15 level had 8 kids, so they obtained a waiver to allow those kids to play JV high school ball. Jon said there are three main challenges: Getting the word out, getting fields, and getting the Youth program aligned with high school programs. Shauna Smith mentioned that maybe the high schools should run summer camps to get more youth involved. It was brought up that Lincoln has lacrosse in its school curriculum, but that doesn’t start until the 8th grade. Gwen then displayed the posters she uses and suggested that Lincoln might want to use them in the middle and high schools to help get the word out.

Notes from Jon Backstrom’s report:

Jon gave the following update on the state of Iowa Youth programs. Currently, Ames does not have a Youth program. WDM has 42 kids, ranging in age from 4th to 8th graders. U13 is their biggest group. Ankeny has a program, but it’s currently very small. Iowa went away from OLC, due to the weekly drive, but wants to talk to Gwen about maybe swapping home games. WDM played Ankeny 12 times. Jon also said that the field at Valley (Tiger Field), is getting turf, and will get boys and girls lacrosse lines with lights. Jon also said they have summer YMCA for youth.

Lori Kilstrom reported that Youth needs to be the focus. In 2012, we had 196 players, and 9 teams. 2013 had 274 players. From 2014 – 2016 we only grew from 274 players to 385. We need to do better.

Supporting the Game

Lori Kilstrom gave this report on supporting the game:

We have made good connections with our US Lacrosse contact point, Steve Kirr
We have created an Operations guideline document to level set how the NELAX league should run
We now have a Twitter and Facebook presence. Brian Howe suggested we look at using the MaxPrep Twitter feed. This might give us better visibility, since most other sports use MaxPreps, and we’d get noticed by more athletes and coaches.
Creighton Prep uses SportNgin, which is a competitor to LeagueAthletics. We are considering updating our website, so it is good to know what other companies folks have found useful
We have developed a relationship with the UNO Athletic Director. We should be able to use their stadium at times
We need to connect with the Great Plains Chapter of US Lacrosse. Chapters get funding, which we should be able to tap into. Also should/could we move to the Minnesota chapter? That chapter wants us, and may be willing to part with more funding. Bob Hoffer suggested we find out when the chapter budgets are due, then get our request for fund in to US Lacrosse and our Chapter. This should help make sure we get out slice. We can request funding for things like needing money to bring in outside officials for training and to work games.

Bob Hoffer gave his overview of supporting the game, from the Officials point of view:

Bob said that the level of play is much better, than in past years. He also said that commentary on officials’ calls from players has gotten worse. He needs help from coaches, players, and parents to get players to temper their comments. We can’t recruit officials, if people tweet comments about them after games. No one wants to sign up for that kind of abuse. Coaches comments on the sidelines have improved. He does get questions and comments about calls and officiating, but he tries to answer them through his weekly memos. It takes about three years to get an official fully trained and trusted, we need to be patient with the newer ones, so they stay around long enough to get good.
Bob mentioned that he could use help with scheduling. It was a tough year, and we did run into conflicts and shortages. Is it possible to have the scheduling meeting earlier? Can we have more games during the week? We should try to have JV and Varsity games on the same day.
There was low participation in training clinics. Should we make it mandatory? Should we move it to early Feb or March? And what the penalty for not attending if we make it mandatory? Should we have an August and a February training session? Teams need to help get folks to become officials. Officials must be 14, and can do youth games 2 years below their age. UNL has an Officials Club. UNO has an officiating course. Some high schools (Millard West and Lincoln), have officiating as a class. We need more officials!
Game footage – Should we have a league Hudl account? Can we get the Chapter to pay for it? If not, could NELAX? Lincoln uses it, and it cost 800 per year, and 400 per year for youth. Burke uses it, but they are on the school’s account. The school got it for football, but since it’s a school account, lacrosse can use it also for no additional cost. Maybe other HS teams can do the same.
ByLaw suggestions: Bob suggested we put in that a running clock, also means penalties are time and ½. There was confusion as to whether that was the case in some games. 6 ft x 6 ft is our goal dimension. Rounded rage cages don’t really meet that. Do we get teams to buy new cages to meet that rule? We could just put in a bylaw that allows for a non-regulation field setup, which would then cover the cages, and those fields which do not meet US Lacrosse standards.

Other Suggestions and Comments:

Westside suggested we play each team only once. That would balance the schedule and make it easier for teams to have time to play out of conference games like Lee’s Summitt. This should also free up more dates for the state tournament.
Lincoln suggested that when there is running clock, we stop the clock after goals. Teams can lose 1-2 minutes of time as the ball is being placed for the next faceoff.
Drug policy – Add a drug policy to the player/parent agreement that says we can drug test and what the penalties are for failing. Creighton Prep already does drug tests as part of its program

Growing the Game

Gwen outlined how they are growing the game.

They run a fall lacrosse league.
They put up posters in the schools, to get information about the league, out to kids.
They run Intro to Lacrosse clinics periodically. Gwen mentioned we should have high school teams to run a “Lacrosse Day” for middle schools and high schools. These would be Intro clinics and run in the fall.
Also each team could run a summer camp. It would be a fundraiser for the team, and allow kids to meet players from teams they would play on eventually.
Gwen and Art also facilitate Coaching clinics through US Lacrosse. This year, the clinics are August 13 and 14, and one would sign up through the US Lacrosse site.
Gwen and Art help setup Officials training for Men’s lacrosse and Women’s lacrosse.
They also put on the Alpha 423 clinic. This clinic brings professional lacrosse players to Omaha, to run a camp for kids.
Also, they work with NPL, to run Box lacrosse leagues in the fall.
There is a Developmental league for adults and older youth, with helps people understand the game better. This helps build future coaches.
Also OLC spent 4000.00 on advertising.
Gwen mentioned her biggest challenge is getting fields. She would like to buy land, so OLC and high school teams, have a permanent field. The Burke head coach mentioned he might have an “in” to use the Chiefs practice field.
Gwen mentioned that another challenge is finding qualified coaches

Jon Backstrom said they draw from 5 to 6 high schools so far, but are officially linked to Valley. West Polk wants help starting a JV team, and Ames should be able to play varsity next year. Ankeny grew its program pretty fast. We should check with them to see how.

Todd McMartin and Tracy Nedd discussed their conversations with the representatives from the California USL chapter, and the Minnesota USL chapter. They confirmed that the key to growth is to grow the Youth programs, and expand the officials’ ranks. We have established good contacts in those USL organizations and will be using them as mentors for our growth activities. Fortunately, quite a bit of what they suggested, we are already doing, or have plans to do.

The summit ran out of time, so we did not get to have break out groups on the topics of Recruiting High School Kids; How best to Reinvest; and The State Tournament (schedule and structure). I’m sure there will be more discussion on those fronts in the future.