Where Things Stand

I hope you enjoyed the two Hawkeye interviews. That is all I have been able to get done for now. Unfortunately, I have not heard back from anybody at ISU, Neb, UNO, Creighton, or any of the other schools. I know that this is just after midterm time and Thanksgiving break is coming up, so I will hold off on bothering them for the time being. As I hear back from anybody, I will write up and post the interviews. The bad part is that the two guys who responded were not even from Iowa! Every one of the Iowa-based schools has native Iowans on its roster. You'd think that they would help out a bit...
Prior to those interviews, I posted some lengthy blogs about the various types of lacrosse being played in North America. I know that part of that was lifted straight from Wikipedia, but I did that for the convenience of the people who are completely new to the sport. I wanted to have everything in one east-to-access location. Hopefully the pictures included kind of helped tell the story. Speaking of which, have you responded to the polls? Let me know what you like to play (or even would like to play if you had the option) by selecting an item on the sidebar poll.

By now you may have noticed the Great Atlantic Lacrosse and Eurosport Soccer links on my page. Maybe you noticed the Great Atlantic Lacrosse hyperlinks when the company is mentioned in one of my blogs. In case you are wondering what those are about, I honestly support that company. I have ordered from Sports Endeavors (the parent company of Great Atlantic Lacrosse and Eurosport Soccer) several times over the last few years and have been extremely satisfied. After signing up with Club Lax at Great Atlantic Lacrosse, I received an offer to place the company's links on my site. Yes, I do get a small commission if you click the link and complete a transaction. However, anyone that knows me realizes that I only endorse companies I believe in. In other words, I would not put a link to Great Atlantic Lacrosse up here if I thought they were anything less than spectacular.

So, where do we go from here? Wherever we can. First and foremost, we need more people to get involved. If you have an inkling somebody may be even remotely interested, get them to this site and/or to the Des Moines Lacrosse League site. I think there should be no problem having high school age kids play with adult right now since most of those boys are bigger than us anyway. Although we will be playing the "male" version of lax, I am not opposed to interested women joining in. Let me hear what you want by voting in the polls and posting comments. This site is set up for anonymous users to post, so feel free.

At some point we need to get some fields picked out. We should be able to play wherever, but we may have to reserve fields and/or get permits and whatnot. I want to get an idea of how many players we may have before getting too involved in that though so I will have a better idea of our needs. Along with that, we will need goals. Chumash, as you read earlier, uses a special goal, so its use would be quite limited. However, if that is the route we would most likely go, then it may be worthwhile to build/buy one. Otherwise, we would need a couple of lacrosse goals. For the time being, practice or "backyard" goals would be sufficient. The only problem is that they start around $100 or more and making them does not look much cheaper. At this point, I am unsure of where the cash will come from...

On that same note, if/when we get enough players for a GPLL team or even rec league, we may need a sponsor or two. A few local businesses sponsor teams in the adult hockey league, so if we could get something similar for lax, that would be great. I am not positive about how business sponsorships would work, but team/jersey deals are highly likely and I would definitely pimp them on this site. Reversible practice jerseys are a big thing in lacrosse and are usually fairly inexpensive ($8.99 each for Club Lax orders of 25 or more at Great Atlantic Lacrosse). That is a "play it by ear" scenario right now and we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

I will continue trying to recruit people to play lacrosse in the Des Moines area. I will keep trying to interview players at local college clubs. I will keep searching for info on the West Des Moines/Waukee high school lacrosse club. Above all, I will keep posting everything I can that is even remotely related to lacrosse in Des Moines. In the meantime, check out the Warrior Nation.