Sammamish Lacrosse Club

January 7, 2011

Hello Sammamish! I just got done shoveling my driveway for the second time today and I'm really missing Washington! I've been pretty busy with lacrosse since day one in Minnesota. Over the Summer, I helped out Delano Lacrosse (west of Minneapolis) during the closing weeks of their season. They ended up winning their league championship and I like to think it was because of my help! Out here, the Spring season is for club teams and starts in late March. The school team season starts at the beginning of Summer and runs through August. We also have a youth indoor league that starts in a few weeks. I started coaching for Homegrown Lacrosse in August and I just finished up a Winter League with them. Homegrown Lacrosse is a lot like WALAX in that they serve a lot of communities and sponsor many lax events in the area. You can check them out at www.homegrownlacrosse.org. Also over the Summer I created www.MinLax.com which is very similar to WALAX, covering all things lacrosse in Minnesota. I also put all of my stringing guides up there as well. There's a surprise photo on the front page, if you can name the Sammamish coach amongst the six other photos, I'll mail the first correct answer a Minnesota Swarm shirt or hat!

Did I mention I also work for the Minnesota Swarm? Before you all start hating me, I still have my Washington Stealth sticker on the rear window of my car! I started with the Swarm in August as an intern in their Community Relations department. I wanted to work with the players and the kids much like the Stealth did for us last season with clinics and appearances. I spent the first few months setting up a youth team at Prairie Island Native American Community (45 minutes East of St. Paul) and running their practices twice a week. We also held a few clinics on other Reservations in conjunction with our Lacrosse 4 Life program. Lacrosse 4 Life is a set of clinics and camps we take to the Reservations to give the kids an activity that will keep them healthy and give them something they can take pride in. The Swarm are active with a few of the Reservations out here and it's a lot of fun going out to their communities and re-introducing them to lacrosse. We plan on entering a team in the Swarm sponsored Youth Box League in the next month and I'm hoping to be their head coach!  In November, the Swarm promoted me to the newly created position of Native American Lacrosse Program Coordinator, which is a bit of a mouthful! I'm very excited and honored to run the program and expand it to other Tribes. One of our goals is to produce a video documentary about the kids and our team to encourage other organizations to do the same in their areas. Our other long term goal is to enter an all Native lax team in the upcoming Indigenous Games in Wisconsin. It will be the first lacrosse team to represent Minnesota in more than 100 years and I'm really honored to be their coach!

That's about all as far as an update for now, you might be able to see me on the Swarm turf in the online broadcast and rebroadcast of the Swarm game, I'll be the guy with long hair surrounded by kids during the pregame activities and player introductions. Don't tell anybody, but since the Stealth have their home opener and Championship banner raising on the same night, I'll be wearing a Stealth shirt under my Swarm shirt!

Brian Kimmell