From TampaBay.com / St. Pete Times article
Brandon Wright, Times Correspondent
In Print: Friday, June 24, 2011
Olivia Harris, 14, suits up to play goalie with the Wolfpack team during practice at Al Lopez Park
In Hillsborough County, lacrosse is a club sport. The teams often have names that allude to their geographic locations such as the Freedom Lacrosse Club, a nod to their proximity to Freedom High School. But lacrosse teams are not officially affiliated with public schools.
Until last year, the sport’s governing body allowed lacrosse players to join teams in other areas if no club team existed near their home or school. But a new rule, designed to prepare for the day when Hillsborough County sanctions lacrosse as a varsity sport, changed that. Now, if there is no team near the player’s school, that player will have to sit the season out.
That’s the case for Olivia, who will be a freshman this fall at Bloomingdale High School. With no Bloomingdale team, she won’t be able to play.
“We keep trying to find out why this is happening, and we keep running into brick walls,” her mother, Jolie Harris, said. “We feel like all the time and money we have spent over the last three years is going down the drain because of this new rule.”
Lacrosse’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past decade, and Hillsborough County is no exception. According to a study by US Lacrosse, the sport’s national governing body, youth participation has blossomed from 125,000 in 2001 to more than 350,000 today.
The Florida High School Athletic Association adopted lacrosse as a varsity sport in 2007 and since then, a number of counties throughout the state have joined, rising up from the club level.
“It’s growing across the state,” said Ginger Bean, a member of the girl’s varsity lacrosse committee leadership group for the Florida Gulf Coast chapter of US Lacrosse. “It’s big down in the southern part of the state.”
Yet Hillsborough County, where an estimated 2,500 students in middle and high schools play the sport, has yet to join. Representatives of the sport request each year that lacrosse be added in the county, but officials haven’t budged.
Adding a sport in the current economic conditions is highly unlikely anytime soon, county officials said.
“I don’t care if there are a million teams (playing), the interest level is not an indicator of our decisions,” county athletic director Lanness Robinson said. “No outside influences will affect us. We do what we feel is best for all the student-athletes in the county.”
Because Hillsborough doesn’t recognize lacrosse as a varsity sport, schools have no affiliation with the teams.
“The parents and league provide all financing for uniforms and things like that as of right now,” said Bean, who also coaches the Freedom Lacrosse team. “But the goal is to eventually have it sanctioned by the county.”
Before West Florida and Sunshine State Lacrosse merged to form Florida Gulf Coast Lacrosse in 2010, club teams that went by school names could have up to five players from other areas on their teams.
But that changed when the newly formed chapter decided players must be students at their club team’s associated school — even though the schools have no official connection to these teams.
“(The rule) came about to prepare ourselves and the teams for a possible inclusion (into the FHSAA) through the county recognizing lacrosse as a varsity sport,” Bean said.
That leaves Olivia and other players out in the cold.
“It’s sad because (Olivia) is very talented and really loves to play the game,” said Tim McGoff, who coaches her this summer with a Tampa Catholic High lacrosse club team. “And some girls are going to get caught in the middle.”
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