By Katrina Grant
The Seneca Lacrosse Club held its 2011 All South Jersey Youth Lacrosse Championship last weekend at Seneca High School. The championship welcomed over 150 teams and 22 leagues from as far north as Springfield all the way down to Cape May and between.
“The league has been around for about seven years, but this is the fifth year it’s been held at Seneca High School,” Brian Stahre, tournament chairman said. There is one league in all of South Jersey.”
The season starts March 1 and runs through until the championship. The club is made up from all 22 towns in South Jersey.
This year the championship had a pretty good turnout, drawing a crowd of thousands people to Seneca High School.
“It looked like Woodstock,” Stahre said. “Every parking spot and every curb spot was filled. That’s why we use Seneca, because they have a large parking lot, and they have 15 fields to accommodate the games.”
The teams range in grade from kindergarten to eighth-grade, girls and boys. For the championship each team plays about four to six games, totaling about 600–900 games for the whole championship.
“There are two divisions in the championship,” Stahre said. “There’s the championship division and the festival division. The championship division is for the more highly seeded teams and the festival division is for the fifth-grade and under teams. About half of the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade teams play the festival and half play the championship division.”
The tournament went from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and there were many vendors, concessions and contests set up throughout the day.
“We have a fastest shot contest and a quick sticking contest, as well as many others,” Stahre said. There’s nothing that goes on after the games, everyone is just generally exhausted from playing their games.”
In the tournament there are five championship divisions. The sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade boys and the fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade boys make up these divisions.
“The Seneca sixth-grade boys did win for one of the championship divisions,” Stahre said.
