By December, the District 203 school board must vote whether or not they will send lacrosse teams to the IHSA state tournament

By Staff Writer John Conway

According to the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), both boys and girls lacrosse will be added as state-sanctioned sports during the 2013-2014 season as long as at least 65 boys and 40 girls programs enter the tournament. If either of these requirements are not met by December, neither tournament will occur.

Following suit, the school board is currently deciding whether District 203 should be one of the districts to participate. In order to meet the IHSA deadline, the vote must take place before the December deadline. Currently, the school board has no set date for the vote, according to Administrative Assistant Anne Bell.

Jennifer Baumgartner, NNHS Dean of Student Activities, has watched participation in the boys and girls lacrosse teams grow, and she recognizes this as a result of Lacrosse’s growing popularity at NNHS and in the country.

“I’ve had [lacrosse athletes] just as the sport was coming out,” Baumgartner said. “[Now] lacrosse is nationally getting bigger. More kids want to play, and it’s becoming more visible. It’s here to stay.”

Although never sanctioned as a sport by NNHS, Baumgartner said the lacrosse clubs have received cost-saving support from the school. Such support includes bus transportation and field time.

“We try to do as much as we can for these athletes, aside from supplying their equipment,” Baumgartner said.

Lacrosse is an expensive sport to play, but the individual cost would be less costly if sanctioned. Club athletes supply their own equipment, while school athletes have equipment provided by the school. As a school-sanctioned sport, the price would shift from the athletes to the school.

“It was never about ‘oh, lacrosse is a bad sport. We don’t want kids playing it.’ No, we want to support our kids 100 percent,” Baumgartner said. “It was truly a cost issue.”

NNHS girls lacrosse is heavily pushing the School Board to vote in favor of sanctioning the sport. According to a Chicago Tribune article, the girls team sent a delegation to the school board with Naperville Central. Junior NNHS lacrosse player Carly Shisler mentioned that having Lacrosse as a club impedes their ability to recruit new talent.

The girls also feel a sense of under-appreciation, according to sophomore lacrosse player Kenna Freund.

“We put in just as much effort in as the other sports,” Freund said. “But we receive not nearly as much recognition.”

Boys lacrosse has seemed less animated about sanctioning their sport than their female counterparts. Boys Head Coach Kevin Benages declined an interview, and his athletes were unwilling to comment for this story.

One source of the boys’ discontent may be the lack of freedom that school sports receive, according to Baumgartner. This lack of freedom is tied to funding; if the school funded the sport, they would have to budget the expenses. Boys lacrosse will feel this affect more than girls, according to Baumgartner.

“Boys lacrosse is a totally different ballgame,” Baumgartner said. “The boys’ gear costs more. We were originally going to have them provide their own helmets, but due to concussion guidelines, the school has to provide them.”

With more funds going towards the purchasing and refurbishing of equipment, there is less available for coaching staff and other items, according to Baumgartner.

“They would be losing certain things, and gaining others,” Baumgartner said. “My gut tells me that, sometime in the future, the school will sanction this sport. The challenge is overcoming the financial hurdles that lay ahead of us.”