BY MATT STOUT
When you talk to Bill Gahara, you’re talking to a baseball guy. The president of the Hooksett Youth Athletic Association, Gahara played baseball, still coaches baseball and has a son who plays baseball.
Yet, there’s something about lacrosse that grabs him.
“I think that’s the unfortunate thing that’s happening to baseball, the young kids, the Little League kids – and I even question if 6 is too young – it just becomes a boring game,” Gahara said.
“Lacrosse is neat. I’ve said it to myself that if it was around when I was in high school, I would have liked to play it.”
Hundreds of thousands of people agree with him. The fastest-growing sport in America among men and women, according to data collected by the annual National Federation of State High School Associations, lacrosse has exploded on the youth sports scene in recent years.
Among athletes 15 or younger, membership in U.S. Lacrosse, the sport’s national governing body, has more than tripled since 1999, from 40,000 members to 125,000 in 2006, according to the organization’s annual participation survey.
New Hampshire has experienced similar growth.
According to numbers released by the state’s chapter of U.S. Lacrosse, youth participation has grown from 3,535 players in 2001 to 5,346 in 2006, more than a 50-percent increase. The New Hampshire Youth Lacrosse Association, a U.S. Lacrosse-affiliated organization, started with six to eight programs in 1994, and since has ballooned to an estimated 34, said Hooksett resident Gary Dempsey, the NHYLA president.
During a time when youth sports in general are growing and kids are looking for more chances to be active, lacrosse has proved the perfect fit. It combines attributes of several sports – hockey, soccer and basketball included – and, though hardly the goal of U.S. Lacrosse, it’s given youth athletes a fast-paced alternative to traditional spring sports, namely baseball.
As a result, Little League programs across the state have experienced a slight drop, several officers and coaches said, and some athletes, like those in Goffstown, are participating in both at the same time, said Goffstown Junior Baseball president John Riehl.
“It seems like wherever it hits, it starts to spread out,” said Brian Logue, director of communications for U.S. Lacrosse. “One program doesn’t come to an area and stop. And whatever it is, it’s gotten this kind of cool image, and that has played a big part in it, too.”
Additional TV exposure at the professional and collegiate levels have played key roles in the sport’s overall growth, but they’re not the only reasons.
Unlike other mainstream sports that promote year-round participation, lacrosse coaches and organizations “vehemently oppose” the idea, Logue said.
There is demand for offseason leagues and camps, said Chris Cameron, a Bedford resident, Bishop Guertin’s coach and co-founder of Granite State Lacrosse. Though his organization offers summer camps, an indoor league and the state’s only boys elite teams, Cameron said, it doesn’t promote specialization.
“Even college recruiters, who I talk to for the (elite) Tomahawks kids and my BG kids, one of the things the coaches always ask is, ‘Does he play multiple sports?’” Cameron said. “That is important.”
To thousands of youth athletes, so is lacrosse.
“I think it used to primarily be played in private schools, in prep schools, and that’s no longer the case,” said Steve Kirkpatrick, a coach in Bedford Youth Lacrosse and father of four boys who play. “Kids are waking up to it.”