Pack starts practicing
The Nevada lacrosse team practices at Wolf Pack Park on Sunday. Lacrosse is a club sport that is actively pursuing recruits. Nevada’s season starts this spring. Photos by Daniel Clark /Nevada Sagebrush
The Wolf Pack lacrosse club had its first practice Sunday and is actively seeking new players and sponsorships for the upcoming sports season, which will also include the first-ever Nevada women’s lacrosse team.
“This has been my life since I got here,” Nevada lacrosse player Adam Crabtree said.
Crabtree, who started playing lacrosse when he was 8, said he has worked hard to get Nevada lacrosse the attention it deserves.
Crabtree has received sponsorships from Warrior and Harrow Lacrosse manufacturers, but he is also seeking funding from companies in the community like The Little Waldorf and Wells Fargo. Since lacrosse is a club sport, it has to get the majority of its funding from private donations.
“It’s an expensive sport to play,” he said.
The Wolf Pack needs the funding for its fast approaching exhibition season this fall.
“We have a game scheduled for Oct. 4 against Chico State,” Nevada men’s coach Andy Socha said. “We haven’t scheduled our games for the season yet, but we are working at scheduling a game against UNLV at Mackay Stadium. We played them last year and we beat the crap out of them.”
The Wolf Pack beat the Rebels 17-7 last season in Las Vegas. Nevada finished the 2008 season 5-8, but Crabtree thinks this season will be different.
“At the end of last season we started working out and conditioning more and we worked on our stick skills,” he said.
Crabtree said most people who come out to play with the team have never played lacrosse in their lives.
“Lacrosse is a tough sport to learn,” he said. “We had some guys come out last year who had never played, but they stuck with it. Now they are really good players.”
The Wolf Pack is in the Western Collegiate Lacrosse League, which includes teams like Stanford, Cal-Berkeley and UC-Davis. The WCLL is changing its league standings, though, and next year the league will be split into two separate divisions. The south, which includes teams like Arizona, USC and UNLV, will no longer be in the same league as the northern teams.
“The previous structure was limiting our growth,” WCLL President Gary Podesta said. “We couldn’t take in any new teams and adequately grow the league.”
Teams in the south will join the Southwestern Lacrosse League, while Nevada will remain in the WCLL.
The 2008 season won’t only include a new league for the Wolf Pack, but also the addition of the school’s first-ever women’s team.
“It’s been hard (to start) because no one in Reno knows about lacrosse,” Nevada women’s lacrosse player Amy Evans said.
Evans started playing lacrosse two years ago when she was a freshman at Seattle University. She said one of her floormates came to her door and forced her to play. Evans said she was then forced to get into a van and was told to read a rulebook.
“She kidnapped me,” Evans said. “(Lacrosse) is a hard sport to learn. It was really frustrating for the first couple weeks.
“Throwing and catching wasn’t that bad, but it was running with the ball that was really hard.”
Evans said she was so frustrated when she was getting started that she threw her stick at the ground and broke it.
“I was so embarrassed,” she said.
Evans said she is optimistic about Nevada lacrosse, especially after 40 students came to the first women’s practice earlier this semester.
Evans will go to UC-Santa Barbara Oct. 4, where she will figure out Nevada’s schedule for the upcoming season.
If Nevada students are interested in playing lacrosse, they can contact Evans and Crabtree through the clubs page on the University of Nevada, Reno web site. Students must be enrolled in 12 credits per semester or 24 credits for the year in order to qualify under WCLL regulations.
Emerson Marcus can be reached at emarcus@nevadasagebrush.com
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