Men’s lacrosse club looks to thrive and grow on campus

By Emma Luther
Western Herald

The Men’s lacrosse team went undefeated this past weekend at the Kalamazoo Fall Lacrosse Classic beating Central Michigan University in the championship 4-1.
Club lacrosse has been at Western Michigan University since 1987 and has continued to thrive here on campus.

“Lacrosse is a growing sport and even though we are a club team we are still very serious. We are interested in not only lacrosse aspects but also spreading local awareness of the sport. We are also trying to generate some goodwill with the club and university,” said Evan Pavlick, president of lacrosse team.

The lacrosse team also generated donations for the Wounded Warrior Project at the tournament, where people donated on site and online.
“The project is geared towards helping veterans from the Iraq war that need help,” Vice President Zach Hughes said.

The team has been wearing camouflage jerseys for the past two weeks to try to create awareness of the project and also their team. The team raised almost $600 this past weekend towards the project and will continue to take donations online on their Web site.

“We just really want to get out what we are doing, so people are aware that we exist. We care more about just lacrosse, and winning games,” said Nick Facca, treasurer of team.
Lacrosse has recently become more popular in the region where high school and middle school teams have been established.

While lacrosse is only a club sport at Michigan universities, it is a varsity sport in the east coast universities like Syracuse University and John Hopkins University.

“We figure that with more support, at least with fans, which will eventually turn into support from the administration and the university. Maybe some day down the road, long after we’re gone, there will be a varsity program here or at least a program that is competing at a high level,” Pavlick said.

Their real season comes around in the spring where they will be traveling all over the region to compete against different university club teams.

Their home field is at Vicksburg High School just 30 minutes south of Kalamazoo.

“We feel that we have a good student backing right now with the team, but we would really like to see that grow. We would like to see more fans at the games to continue to let our program grow and become more competitive as a team,” Facca said.

The men’s lacrosse team plays next on Halloween at 1:30 p.m. at home against CMU and Davenport University.

For more information about their schedule, rosters, and contact information, please go to their Web site at www.wmulax.com .

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=10843

Posted by heraldstaff on Oct 26 2009. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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