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One on One: With Mifflin County Lacrosse Coach Zach Smith

Editors note: Recently Hometown Sports editor Kenny Varner caught up Mifflin County Head coach Zach Smith. The two talked about bringing lacrosse to Mifflin County and it’s bright future.
HS: Tell me how the idea of bringing a lacrosse team to Mifflin County got started.
ZS: It in initially started three or four years ago when I graduated December 2015, I came home. I played three or four years at Lock Haven, it was a club sport as well. I came back and wondered what would it take to bring lacrosse to Mifflin County. What would it take to have that dream to one of those kids around the area where I grew up. There were a couple of processes that needed to occur…behind the scenes work. So it took a couple years and it came to the point whether the school liability would cover things.
Then this year we had the chance to go up in front of the school board and ask the question directly to the school board.
Then it was early winter we actually got the go ahead to say that you can absolutely go through with it and that’s where we are today.
HS: How’s the turn out been?
JS: The turnouts been good. I know we had a lot more kids at the beginning of the year. We were close to 30 players at the beginning of the year. The kids who stuck around liked the challenge and they really wanted to try something new. I have other kids who watch the sport on TV like college games they say that this looks fun and now we are out here. I couldn’t asked for a better group of kids. We have about 20 kids right now.
HS: Lacrosse seems to have a little bit of everything, a little bit of a lot of different sports. How does playing a sport like this help an athlete that plays it?
JS: we have quite a variety of players. We got guys offense and defense that half my guys play football and half plays soccer. It’s a contact Sports and the football guys just want to hit someone and they love every bit of it and the soccer guys, they are super conditioned, so they love the aspect of just being able to move around and trying to take the ball away from them defensively and it’s just the finesse that you have in soccer and trying to create space, you have to create plays like you you do in basketball, you have a little bit of everything. There’s a little bit everything in the sport, it’s fast paced and there is always conditioning.
HS: So How has the team been doing?
JS: So far we’ve played three games. We have our first game coming up the 12th and that will be our senior night. It’s going to be our last hurrah for everybody.
In Our first game against Bellefonte we lost be six or seven. Then we went out to Danville and lost the same amount but it was still a good learning experience for us. Because the both coaches we played against, both Bellefonte and Danville, they said they wished that their team would’ve been at where we are at currently. They are really surprised at where we are at in our first year and the progress we’ve made in just a couple months to a half year. I’m really proud of the guys we have and the progress we have made. I look forward to next year as well.
HS: You see this as a starting point. Do you think this will get the ball rolling and in a few years getting a girls team starting up and maybe a junior high program?
JS: I would really like to see it trickle down to junior high to start. I’ve hear interest from junior high kids. Because I know this goes from ninth to 12th, obviously.
But a lot of my freshman said that they have friends in seventh and eighth grade that really want to do it and I’m like they have to be at least a freshman before I can work with them and teach them the basics. So, I’d love to see it expand and as far as next year goes and the expanding, I already have some juniors and seniors saying that it’s already a discussion at the high school and they plan for a bigger turn out next year that are brand new to the sport. It’s nice to hear about that type of expansion compared to where we started. We started with only eight kids. It wasn’t even enough you needed 10 to field a team. Now we are hovering around 20 kids. It’s nice to hear your going to have numbers.

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