Lacrosse moves into Southland

MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn AN UP-AND-COMING SPORT-Oak Park High School's Blair Bennett passes to a teammate during practice at White Oak Elementary School in the city of Westlake Village on Sunday.

Lacrosse, a sport played hundreds of years ago by Native Americans and currently enjoying popularity on the East Coast and in the Midwest, is beginning to take hold in the Conejo Valley and Las Virgenes communities.

Take for example the Conejo Valley Lacrosse League, now in its third season.

"One of the greatest things about lacrosse is that it’s a thinking-on-your-feet sport," said Geoff Sebold, CVLL co-founder and president. "It teaches kids to make decisions as they’re moving, creating, knowing where the next pass is, but creating as you’re going.

"It’s what’s different from other sports where they have set plays and you go and do this. It’s such a fluid game. It’s moving all the time."

Registration for the 2004 Boys and Girls Season will continue through Fri., Jan. 30 and is available online only. The season starts Feb. 29 and continues through Memorial Day weekend.

The area lacrosse league includes three boys divisions–fifth and sixth grades, seventh and eighth grades, and high school–and one girls division for eighth through 12th grades, which is already filled.

Both boys and girls start practicing Sunday. Game sites will be announced later.

Sebold grew up in Long Island, N.Y., played lacrosse at Roanoke College in Virginia and later played for club teams on Long Island. When he moved to California, he played for the Malibu Lacrosse Club. "The thing about lacrosse is that it is very much a team sport," he said. "You can be an individual star, but you really have to play like a team."

The boys’ game calls for 10 players on the field, including the goalie. The girls use 12.

"You have to know where everybody is and you have to understand what you are trying to do," Sebold explained. "You have to talk to your teammates to know what they are doing. Also, there’s a lot of hand-eye coordination."

Jim Felber is a CVLL co-founder and the league’s vice president.

"When we started this three years ago we thought we’d have maybe 40 boys and we’d find some games," Felber said. "We heard there were teams in Malibu, Orange County and San Diego. We didn’t know anything."

CVLL began its first season with volunteer coaches Ross Kocen and Nancy Cannon.

"The next thing we knew we had 120 boys," Felber said. "We said, ‘Look, we have six teams and we created a league and we had enough for a girls’ team–all sixth, seventh, and eighth-graders." He noted that there were only about five girls’ teams in Los Angeles and Orange counties beside Thacher and Cate, both private schools in Ventura County.

Felber said the CVLL was started when a couple of boys asked him, "What’s lacrosse?"

I said, "I don’t know, but I know who does."

He met Sebold, Kocen and Cannon and the league got its start.

"We literally said, ‘Let’s do this,’" Felber said. "We didn’t know what we were doing, but we bought uniforms, we got fields and we barely had enough referees and the biggest problem was (finding) enough qualified coaches.

"It’s not like soccer or these other sports where it’s possible to learn in a couple of weeks. All of our coaches have played somewhere. That’s important because this sport is too unique and that’s why we’re at 16 boys’ teams and two girls’ teams."

One of the league’s boys’ coaches is Tommy Chancler, who coaches the Oak Park Eagles club team.

"I’m passing on my knowledge of the game by demonstrating," Chancler said. "Actions speak louder than words. I try to go out and demonstrate, show some patience. A lot of the kids are new. We get some basics and fundamentals instilled and we build on that."

Chancler, who played lacrosse at UC Santa Barbara, said that one of the challenges in coaching lacrosse is that some of the boys already have played under different systems.

"It’s just a matter of fine-tuning things the way we want to do it here," he said. "They’ve played on other teams. Maybe they’ve run a different offense. Some of the newer kids, we’ve just got to get them started on the same page. How to hold the stick, how to throw and catch. How to cut, how to position on defense."

Jamine Aponte, one of the girls’ team coaches and a former all-conference star at Marist College, said it’s her goal to make sure the new players gain confidence quickly.

"I think the best thing that I will be able to bring to this team is confidence," Aponte said, "to believe in themselves and focus on the sport and not be thinking about other outside forces that are going on in their lives."

Blair Bennett, a freshman at Oak Park High, plays attack and midfielder for the Oak Park Eagles club team.

He said that he learned how to play lacrosse quickly because he also plays hockey and football.

"I have my speed from football and I have stick work from hockey and I know how to read positions and read the field from both sports," Bennett said. "You have to find the open man without looking at him; you need to know where he is."

Bennett said he hopes to earn a college lacrosse scholarship.

"I am definitely work on going to camps during the summer and tournaments," he said. "I hope to play lacrosse at a West Coast college or university."

Felber said the CVLL will continue to grow in this area and already has produced three high school club boys’ teams at Oaks Christian, Oak Park and Westlake high schools.

Agoura and Calabasas high schools will also field CVLL-organized teams this year, and a Conejo Valley area team will include athletes from Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark.

The girls’ teams include players from Agoura, Calabasas, La Reina, Oak Park, Oaks Christian, Thousand Oaks and Westlake.

For about tryouts, practices and games, call (818) 773-3353 or visit www.conejolacrosse.com