The next sports sensation

Lacrosse, much like soccer in the ’90s, is starting to take Shelby County by storm, officials say.

County manager Alex Dudchock said he wants to take advantage of this boom and generate a push that would increase the number of participants in youth lacrosse. However, the push, according to Lacrosse Academy of Birmingham director and co-founder Jim Jasinski, is mostly driven by tourism dollars from out-of-town teams coming to the county for tournaments.

“We’re excited that the sport is starting to grow,” Dudchock said during a County Commission meeting in February. “We encourage the leagues and the operators and the developers of the nonprofit training groups to reach out to the county. Where we can help them in any way, we’ll work to do that. 

“Because we see it as an opportunity for not only Shelby County children and others to continue developing, but, even more importantly, it’s a side to us that sees it’s a clean industry and a clean generator of tourism dollars and economic development in the sense of hotel usage and use of our venues.”

Growing the sport is also one of Jasinski’s goals. But he said he has a difference of opinion in the method to create the growth.

“The way they are going to grow the sport, most likely, is to bring in outsiders and professional organizations,” he said. “I don’t have a good feeling about that. I just have hard feelings about bringing professional organizations into our residences, which quadruple the cost of those endeavors. The long and short is, that my heart and my time and my money will stay with the recreation side of the sport on behalf of affordability.”

Jasinski’s LAB program is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that offers free training four days a week for children from 11 to 17 during the summer. He said he also has travel teams that play throughout the summer, and he started a spring league — North Shelby County League — that offers a chance for kids in U9, U11 and U13 to play on teams. 

He said he had 400 kids participate last summer and about 80 kids in the spring league. He said he believes that number will double next spring.

Jasinski, who is also the coach at Oak Mountain High School, said nine of the players in his program earned college scholarships after last season. Six of the scholarship recipients played for Jasinski at Oak Mountain, including his son, Jack, who is a freshman at Ohio State. His son’s team upset Duke in last season’s NCAA Tournament first round and fell to eventual NCAA champion Denver, 15-13, in the quarterfinals. 

Five players from BamaLax, a club based in Birmingham, also signed college scholarships.

Dudchock cited scholarship opportunities as another reason to promote growth of the sport, even though the Alabama High School Athletic Association does not sanction lacrosse. 

Greater Birmingham Youth Lacrosse Association (GBYLA) President Steve Ammons said he believes the sport will one day be sanctioned, but that’s not a stressed issue at this point.

“The goal is to get to strengthen our youth programs first, and then the high school sanctioning will come,” Ammons said. “Once the high school sanctioning happens, it really should explode. I think it was the same thing with soccer. Once it got sanctioned, it really began to grow big. For us, that’s been put on the back burner. I think we recognize that we have to build the youth program. We don’t have the high school program without that youth base.”

Ammons said the GBYLA has about 1,500 kids playing in its boys and girls program with the bulk of those coming from Jefferson County communities.  The organization also is associated with youth lacrosse organizations in Huntsville, Auburn and the Mobile area, which combine to have about 750 kids.

According to a recent press release from GBYLA, the organizations are “proceeding expeditiously on the creation of the Alabama Lacrosse Association (ALA) as a 501(c)(3) organization to help grow the sport of lacrosse in Alabama.”

Growth, education and promotion will be among the primary focuses of ALA with support for the development of new leagues one of the priorities.

“GBYLA has been the central force, because we have the most players, and we play a regular league season,” Ammons said.  “When I became president almost two years ago, one of my goals was to create how we can all be on the same page and all be under the same set of policies.”