Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in Minnesota, and Carlton County now has a team to call its own.
The Northland Chargers have 13 players, most from Carlton County, and two new coaches who are passionate about helping the sport grow in Northern Minnesota.
“We are a branch-off from the Duluth-Superior Chargers program,” co-coach Tyler Yentsch said. “They are a big club team but when the Duluth schools formed a varsity high school team we split off players from outside their area.”
The Duluth-Superior Chargers were once made up of players from the Duluth schools, Proctor, Hermantown and the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton cooperative schools. Now Proctor and Hermantown have their own team as well, and 13 players are now inaugural members of the Northland Chargers club team.
Ten of those players are from Carlton county, with goalie Taylor Madrinich an import from Duluth. They have a lot to learn.
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“It’s hard work, mentally trying, but it’s worth it to see the sport grow,” co-coach Nick Puccio said. “When it comes to games, when you see things happen in a game that you are teaching, that’s where it really starts to be fun.”
To make matters even more fun, the team won its first-ever game, 5-2 over Bemidji. Not only was it the first time the team had played a game, it was also the first time - as in, ever - the team had played together outdoors.
“We had a string of bad weather,” Puccio said. “So to go out there when we had never played together as a team before outdoors and win made it really fun.
“They looked like a team that was ready to play,” he added. “What was surprising was not that they won, but rather how they did it.”
The Chargers have five players who were in the Duluth-Superior program last year and eight first-year players, many of whom play or played related sports.
“Typically, hockey players pick it up the fastest,” Yentsch said. “The skills are easiest to learn as a hockey player but there are physical aspects of the game like in football but, of course, how you play the body is different. There are soccer skills, too, because you can use your feet and there’s lots of running. And the offensive setup is similar in a way to basketball.”
Other club teams are located in Grand Rapids, Waconia, Brainerd, Becker and Rocori among other places but more and more schools are offering lacrosse as a varsity sport.
“The trend is to jump into the (Minnesota) State High School League as soon as you can,” Yentsch said. “Obviously, you want to wait until your program is large enough and we are a ways away from that.”
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Puccio played the sport in his hometown of Deerfield, Ill., which is a suburb of Chicago, and is mentoring Yentsch, who is a coaching minor in school.
“Tyler coached in the [Duluth-Superior] Chargers system for three years and now he’s getting a chance to coach in a different setting,” Puccio said. “This team needed coaching experience and he is a coach in training. He’s doing a great job.”
The natural question is whether the cooperative schools can field a varsity program. Yentsch believes the team is four to five years away from reaching that level.
“Ideally you would want 40 kids to try out so you can have a varsity and a JV program and of course the school board has to approve it,” Yentsch said. “That would be the minimum.”
And, there’s the matter of teaching the existing players. The Chargers haven’t won since their opener, although they have been competitive in each game to this point.
“We won the first one, we know we can do it,” Yentsch said.
“I’d like to say the first win was coaching, but we can’t take credit for it,” Puccio said, laughing. “I wish we could, but we have some really good players.”
The team plays its home games at Erickson Field at Carlton’s South Terrace Elementary School and hosts Grand Rapids at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 12.
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