Greetings Athletes and Parents!
Although practice doesn't start until March 16, 2015, I wanted to let everyone know that preparations are well underway for the 3rd and 4th Grade Zeeland Lacrosse Team. You should see the listing for this program in the Spring Zeeland Recreation Booklet due in January. Once this is out, you are free to sign-up and pay.
Equipment: This program will require the athlete to have their own stick, helmet, cup and full pads (shoulder,elbow, gloves). Chest protector and/or rib pads are recommended at this age. Cleats are highly recommended. There are specialized lacrosse cleats but soccer cleats are the next best thing. Football cleats are ok too. Baseball cleats not recommended. When buying a stick, please take a standard regulation lacrosse ball and make sure it fits in the pocket and does not get stuck. Some of the cheaper sticks (eg. fiddlestix) aren't made for standard lacrosse balls and it will be very difficult to throw/catch.
Practice: This team will practice twice per week and once the season begins will hopefully have 1 game per week. I am expecting practice to be Mondays and Wednesdays at 6pm for 90 minutes. Please note that I do travel for work. I typically travel 1 or two weeks a month. There will be likely be a few practices that we will not be able to have practice but I will do my best to avoid this. If my schedule gets busier than I expect, we will schedule make-up practice times.
Games: Can be in Zeeland or as far away as Rockford or Caledonia. I want to play as many games as possible and will try to schedule as many as possible but we are limited to the number of 3/4 grade level teams that are fielded by other area programs. At the moment Holland, Grand Haven, Hudsonville/Jenison, Rockford and Caledonia are
planning 3/4 teams but that will depend on their participation levels. I can't guarantee that they will all have teams. If there ends up being a low number of competition, we'll try to schedule multiple games against the teams that exist. We really won't know which areas field teams until february. I will be planning games for Saturday mornings in the 10-12am timeframe whenever possible but some games may not fall in this window.
Costs will be $75. Fees pay for:
- Reversible numbered Pinnies
- Balls. A case of balls costs $190. We are hoping to only need one case for the year.
- Zeeland Recreation for administration and field upkeep
- Equipment: We will have goalie equipment, field marking, first aid and other items that we keep as a team. Since almost everyone will play defense at some point and most will play goalie we won't expect one or two families to pay for the extra costs of goalie equipment
- Referees for games. Last year the Lakeshore conference decided not to have refs but Zeeland has decided we will have refs for our games as coaches as refs did not work out terribly well.
Signup: Is only through Zeeland Recreation. There is the possibility that our numbers will be bigger than our one team can handle and we currently only have one coach (me). Please signup early if you are interested as there could be a cutoff based on numbers.
Positions: (Goalie, Defense, Midfield, Attack) All players will have the opportunity to play all positions.
Expectations: Unlike other sports like soccer, we have a lot of catching up to do as far as our athletes learning the basic rules of the game and simply learning how to throw/catch/scoop/shoot. Our focus is on continuing to develop fundamentals, promote ideals of good sportsmanship and respect of each other, developing a love of the game and of course playing to the best of our ability.
All players will generally get equal playing time regardless of ability and experience.
Personally, I'm very excited. I coached 3/4 last year after coaching 1/2 the previous year. We had a great group last year and made a lot of progress with our young athletes learning the game.
1/2 Graders: There will be a Beginner Lacrosse program this year similar to last year's Super Scoopers. This will use tennis balls so as not to require full equipment (stick will be the only thing required). This will focus on intrasquad games, no games against other area teams. Signup for this is also through Zeeland Recreation.
Sincerely,
John Delcalzo 3/4 Grade Coach
ZEELAND LACROSSE - TIME, EFFORT, DESIRE, RESPECT
