Caleb Burggraaf
Sports Reporter

Mesa State has been a growing school when it comes to athletic programs. Throughout the last five years, the college has been able to add teams like wrestling, men’s swimming, and men’s golf to the list of sports offered at the college.
This year, another sport is making its appearance on the quickly growing campus. Lacrosse, while already enjoying a great tradition of success at some of the local high schools is ready to make its first appearance at the college level in the Grand Valley.
Why lacrosse? Aside from being one of the fastest growing collegiate sports in the country, it is also what the majority of the student body wanted when it came to another sport on campus.
“We did the student survey, and it was way up on the list of the students,” said Butch Miller, athletic   director for Mesa State.
The man in charge of the program is A.J. Stevens, a lacrosse veteran when it comes to coaching. His resume includes being the head coach for the University of Illinois and having held an assistant coaching job at Dartmouth College. Now that he is here, Stevens is working on building up a program that can compete right away at a Division II level.
“When I was first hired I would spend probably about six hours on the phone four days a week just dialing kids, calling them and telling them about our program,” Stevens said. He recruited over 90 hopeful student athletes to try out for the men’s and women’s teams.
Stevens is looking forward to coaching in the west and has recruited all but one of his players on the men’s team from the western side of the Mississippi River.
“We’re building a Western team with western kids,” Stevens said.
While it isn’t a traditional approach, Stevens has a plan to go along with that strategy.
“These kids in the West kind of have a little chip on their shoulder because they want to prove that they are as good as the kids out East and this is a really good opportunity to do it by playing for us,” Stevens said.
These athletes will have an opportunity to prove their abilities right off the bat, as there are plans to have the men’s team take on the two time defending national champions in C.W. Post (N.Y.) to start the season off. It doesn’t get any easier after that for the men’s team as they go on to challenge two other teams in the top ten.
With the sparcity of men’s lacrosse in the west and a small amount of schools in the RMAC with a lacrosse prgram, the team will try to win their out of conference games to gain national attention.
Tryouts for the men’s team are going to be held on Sept. 4th and will be a one day event with a strength and agility session in the morning and a scrimmaging session in the afternoon. Women’s tryouts are set to be one month later in October.
u
cburggraaf@mesastate.edu