H
undreds of Florida high school players will have varsity lacrosse this spring with an assist from US Lacrosse in
statewide budget battles last summer. Organized high school lacrosse has existed in Florida since the 1970s, but the number of teams in the state has nearly tripled since 2005, with 150 boys’ and 115 girls’ programs expected to play this spring. The Vero Beach girls and the St. Andrews boys are perennial national top-25 contenders (see page 58). The potential for growth is almost as impressive with more than 1,000 high schools in the nation’s fourth-most populous state.
Beyond high school, Jacksonville University now offers NCAA Division I men’s and women’s lacrosse, while the University of Florida and Stetson University (2013) offer Division I women’s programs. Jacksonville also is the home to a nascent North American Lacrosse League (NALL) box franchise, the Jacksonville Bullies, and Orlando hosts US Lacrosse events like Champion Challenge, Champion All-American Showcase and the U15 National Championships. So why was lacrosse on the chopping block in the Sunshine State?
Club System Has Limits For more than 90 years, the Florida
High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) has been the state’s governing body for high school athletics, overseeing recognized and fully sanctioned sports and letting others incubate as club sports. The FHSAA recognized the growth and positive character of lacrosse in Florida by adding it is a recognized sport for the 2008 spring season, setting in motion an unexpected chain of events that, though not the fault of FHSAA, almost caused participation to shrink back to levels last seen in the 1980s. The problem was that as a club sport, lacrosse was treated as a self-funded pay-for-play activity in most public schools, outside the control of county athletic directors, schools and school boards.
Most private schools easily made the transition in 2008 to play lacrosse as an FHSAA-recognized sport. Orange County was one of the few public school systems to transition quickly to FHSAA. Most other school boards simply said no. An agreement was reached to allow pre-existing club programs three years to transition to FHSAA-recognized varsity lacrosse programs. During this transition period, the US Lacrosse-sponsored
A Publication of US Lacrosse March 2012 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 47
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