FUEL
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LAXCON LINEUP
Who to see, where to be at US
Lacrosse Convention BY MATT HAMILTON
John O’Sullivan might not have played lacrosse as a child, but he’s all too familiar with the challenges that youth lacrosse players face as they begin to learn the game.
O’Sullivan, an Oregon native who grew up on Long Island, helped coach his son, Tiernan, after he decided to play. There, the former collegiate soccer player and coach witnessed some of the same youth trends that plagued the sport with which he grew up.
“These were young kids playing and I got to see the good and I got to see the bad,” he
18 US LACROSSE MAGAZINE January 2017
said. ”The league had a rule where you couldn’t slash someone’s stick, but you could lift someone’s stick to get the ball away. Yet these coaches are teaching their kids to go slashing down on them. I’m like, ‘Hey, I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.’ But they’re like, ‘That’s how the game is played. I don’t care about those rules.’”
Coaches weren’t thinking about the children. For O’Sullivan, the sport was new, but the mindset wasn’t. Through his experience as an assistant soccer coach at Vermont — also coaching at the youth level in Vermont, Michigan and Oregon — O’Sullivan knew that something had to change in youth sports culture. That’s why he founded the Changing the Game Project, an organization focused on returning “youth sports to our children,” in 2012. He has spoken all over the world to help spread that message. With US Lacrosse setting out to reform youth lacrosse with the Lacrosse Athlete Development Model, O’Sullivan seemed the perfect fit to lead as the keynote speaker at US Lacrosse Convention, which takes places Jan. 20-22 at the Baltimore Convention Center.
“I’m honored to be able to work with US Lacrosse, to help our visions align,” O’Sullivan said. “Lacrosse is one of those amazing sports. It has incredible opportunity right now because it’s new. [Lacrosse] can get ahead of the curve and really educate upcoming coaches.”
Here’s a list of other speakers appearing at LaxCon:
John O’Sullivan
USlacrosse.org
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