Based on where you live in the United States, different sports take precedence. In the south, it’s football. In the north, it’s lacrosse. 

While sports such as football, baseball, basketball and volleyball are seen in most Texas schools, lacrosse teams are harder to find. There are many schools within the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin areas with lacrosse teams, but not every school has one. Outside of these “hot beds” are even fewer teams.

“It’s not as big of a sport down here as it is up on the East Coast,” Coppell senior attackman Hailey Wenzel said. “We don’t have the numbers, the funding or the geography. Not many people know about the sport and how to play it. If you go up east, it is totally different. Lacrosse is their football.”

Because of the sport’s limited resources and popularity, it is not under the University Interscholastic League (UIL). The UIL works to uphold rules and regulations within the majority of sports in Texas.

The Texas High School Lacrosse League explains this on its website, stating that each year the UIL sends a survey out that gauges interest across the independent school districts in Texas on interest in new activities, such as lacrosse, based on the given sport’s lack of geographic diversity. A lack of knowledge of lacrosse in non-urban areas yields a low level of interest in adding lacrosse as a UIL activity. School funding issues also limit UIL activities because adding new sports requires new equipment and facilities.

Last year, water polo was officially added to UIL (with its pilot program launching in the 2021-22 school year) after a statewide survey showed that 63% of schools in Class 6A prepared to sponsor the sport should the UIL sanction it, reaching the 50% threshold UIL officials use as a guideline for adding new activities. This was the first sport to be added to UIL in more than 20 years.

“You’ve had your standard UIL sports for years and lacrosse steps outside of that,” Coppell Lacrosse Association Board President Brooks Carter said. “Especially in Texas, it’s still relatively new even though it’s been around for multiple years. [If lacrosse was UIL], you would allocate another teaching position that may take away from football, basketball, soccer or any [other sport] that’s under that UIL umbrella. Not every school has a boys and girls program. UIL [may] look at it like ‘we can’t just turn it UIL for boys’ because there’s more boys lacrosse in Texas than girls.”

Lacrosse is an expensive sport, making it difficult for schools to fund. The average cost of lacrosse gear (including sticks, padding, helmets and gloves) is approximately $860, this is before taking into account the replacement of broken equipment.

“Lacrosse is not a cheap sport,” Coppell senior midfielder Alex Haydek said. “Most of the pads and stuff are expensive. Our lacrosse sticks often break and they cost around $200 apiece, [and] after that you have to get the head and you have to string your head with netting and mesh. It’s an expensive sport and a lot of schools around here can’t afford to supply players with equipment.”

While it may not be a UIL sanctioned sport, lacrosse is popular in Dallas-Fort Worth and continuing to grow.

“[Lacrosse] has really been growing a lot since I’ve been [in Texas] since 2012,” Coppell boys lacrosse coach Ryan Mueller said. “Obviously we’re in Texas, right? So football, baseball and basketball are big deals and we support those programs. Some of those coaches are starting to see the value of lacrosse as a cross trainer. It really helps continue development from a young athlete standpoint. Again, it’s never going to be football, we’re in Texas, but it’s really starting to grow and find its home in a lot of the communities here in North Texas.”

Since it is not UIL, Texas lacrosse has its own organizations: the Texas High School Lacrosse League (THSLL) and Girls High School Lacrosse League, which are under the direction of USA Lacrosse. According to Mueller, the two state organizations are beginning to work more closely together and follow UIL rules and regulations as closely as possible. 

The main reasons for the two separate leagues is the differences in how the sport is played. The boys play a much more physical game and wear helmets, shoulder pads, chest pads and gloves, and their sticks have deeper pockets to allow the ball to remain secure through a higher-contact game. In comparison, girls play a more fundamental game with better mechanics, meaning they wear limited equipment. Girls wear goggles, a mouth guard, thin gloves and their sticks don’t have a pocket. Girls goalkeepers, however, wear extra padding, helmets and gloves. The games themselves are also different, with boys playing 10 vs. 10 and girls 11 vs. 11.

“The girls are a lot better fundamentally than the boys, generally speaking, because the girls are forced to play with a stick that’s way less forgiving than the boys,” Mueller said. “[Boys generally] don’t have the proper fundamentals: not snapping your hand to your target or having soft hands when you catch the ball. The girls game is also less contact. It’s a lot more crisp, finesse passing. We make our boys practice with the girls sticks on occasion because it just helps reinforce the proper techniques of passing, catching and picking up round balls.”

Another significant difference between the two is in the contact levels.

“The girls can push on their opponent’s hips a little bit, but there’s far less contact, so they don’t necessarily need the deeper pocket in their stick to keep the ball in, whereas on the boys side you can hit,” Mueller said. “It’s very similar to what you see in hockey; you can kind of hit with your shoulder and your hands as long as they’re together. Having the deeper pocket allows for some more of that contact because if not, with that contact in a very shallow stick, the ball will just be popping out a lot more.”

In Coppell, athletes have the opportunity to join the Coppell Lacrosse Association, an association overseeing girls and guys lacrosse in Coppell. CLAX is composed of seven to nine board members in any given year who manage budgets, help coaches with personnel decisions and make sure funds are allocated correctly.

Coppell ISD allows CLAX to promote lacrosse in P.E. classes throughout Coppell middle and elementary schools.

“Everybody’s been very welcoming and willing to help us grow with being a non-traditional sport for this area,” Mueller said. “The schools let us come in and work with the gym classes and promote the sport. We host free tryout clinics so that when we go to the schools, we give kids a crash course and the fundamentals, we get out and run some drills and let the kids have some fun. We encourage kids to come out to one of our try-out events, or a practice to build on what we talked about in the gym classes from a fundamental standpoint and a gameplay standpoint.”

CLAX also bridges the gap between THSLL and GHSL.

“We have a great relationship with the girls,” Mueller said. “We do the try-out clinics together with girls and boys out on the field at the same time. We also do a girls versus guys game every year, which is a lot of fun. The boys play with the girls sticks and rules. We’ve really tried to build a continuity, not only between youth and high school from a voice standpoint, but we’ve tried to really build a continuity from a girls and boys standpoint. It’s really just going to help us strengthen the lacrosse community even more.”

Because lacrosse isn’t UIL, and therefore isn’t a school sanctioned sport, school credits and hours are not allotted. Practices are held after school, and the sport does not earn students P.E. credits.

“We have a few kids that use practice for off-campus P.E.,” Mueller said. “The requirements are 15 hours a week, and between practices and games [they get those hours], and a lot of our kids will volunteer to help coach the youth teams as well. We don’t have a lot of that this year because we do have a decent amount of all multi-sport athletes that are doing their workouts.”

There are benefits to lacrosse’s lack of UIL status. Athletes who don’t have a team in their town are allowed to join a neighboring team.

“[If an athletes community doesn’t have a team] they go to the THSLL board, the governing body, and typically what happens is you would then go to the next closest community that offers a program,” Mueller said.

This provides athletes with a wider range of opportunities.

“It takes more planning because it’s outside of school and it’s on your own time, but you also get to meet different people,” Wenzel said. “We have a girl from Hebron [senior defender Emma Garcia] on our team because Hebron doesn’t have one and we have a girl from Grapevine Faith [senior defender Claire Bryant] on our team as well. You get to meet different people from cities and schools that don’t have a program. It almost feels like an escape to get out of school; it doesn’t feel like a part of your school routine. It’s an excuse to get out, have fun, but still get a good workout in and have that team dynamic.”

Many lacrosse players are multi-sport athletes, because lacrosse is a good cross-trainer sport. 

“Lacrosse [has a lot of] hand-eye coordination,” Carter said. “Throwing that ball, it’s not the typical softball or baseball where your hands are on it and you can easily dive. That plays a really big role and they [Lacrosse has] very similar styles of play, especially like basketball. If you look at it, there’s a lot of zones. When it’s our own season, lacrosse has a lot of running and it keeps student athletes engaged.”

Because of this, other Coppell coaches and teachers have been known to support lacrosse players.

“Over the years, for boys and girls, there have been really good athletes who play for Coppell and UIL sports and have a lot of success,” Carter said. “All the coaches and administration in Coppell have always been very supportive of fielding space, celebrating the boys winning the state championship last year. A lot of football and basketball coaches have kids that play both sports and they’ll be at the games supporting [their athletes]. We feel like a part of Coppell High School, more than just that we wear the same colors and look the same.”

Follow Torie (@torielpeck) and @SidekickSports on Twitter.