There’s a new team on campus at Summit Charter School, as lacrosse scrimmages began earlier this month against schools in neighboring communities.
The lacrosse program was initially inspired by Summit Head of School Kurt Pusch’s history with the sport. Pusch coached a lacrosse team when he was living in Denver, Colorado. When he arrived on the plateau in 2019, he knew he wanted to bring the sport with him.
“When I moved out here, I noticed the sport hadn’t really taken hold in this area even though it is an extremely fast-growing sport,” Pusch said. “I played high school lacrosse in Atlanta, and when I started it had just started getting its roots. Now, it’s taken off across the state and the Southeast.”
While lacrosse is relatively new to many of the plateau’s current residents, the game’s roots in the Southeast are extensive. Lacrosse is the oldest documented team sport in North America, tracing its roots back nearly 1,000 years to indigenous cultures in Canada and the eastern United States.
A modern-day lacrosse game is played by two teams of 10 with teams attempting to launch a small rubber ball into the opposing team’s goal using sticks with netted baskets affixed to the end. Players may carry the ball in their basket as they run down the field as defensive players attempt to check the ball-carrier and force a turnover.
The sport has taken off in many parts of the country, and many colleges and universities field teams at the highest levels of competition.
As he began to settle into his role at Summit, Pusch said he met several parents and community members with a connection to the sport.
“This community is amazing – there are so many people with so many cool backgrounds, and I was connected with a couple people here who have lacrosse backgrounds,” he said. “In 2019, we started talking with different people who played lacrosse and we were just bouncing around ideas about how to share the sport with Cashiers.”
Jim Dunn, one of the directors of Camp Merrie-Woode, played collegiate lacrosse in upstate New York under Bill Tierney, a prominent lacrosse coach who has secured seven national championships coaching teams at Princeton University and the University of Denver. Dunn shared Pusch’s hopes for growing the sport on the plateau, and the two began connecting the dots to establish a program. The first step was an introductory workshop at Summit.
“We ran an introductory clinic in the spring of 2020, right before the pandemic, and we scheduled three Saturday clinics. We did two of them, then had to shut things down,” Pusch said. “That was the start though, just sharing the game and how to pass and catch, showing them the equipment and everything.”
Although the program was cut short by the pandemic, interest at the school was high. Pusch said more than 20 students expressed an interest in playing the game on a competitive level, and when classes returned in the fall, Summit continued offering the sport as an after-school activity for students.
As students became more familiar with the game, Pusch reached out to nearby schools with lacrosse programs about holding scrimmages.
“This spring, we’ve been running an after-school club teaching more team play, and we’ve been able to participate in one scrimmage this season already with Rabun Gap,” Pusch said. “The boys have another scrimmage on Saturday and one in May, and for our girls we have one scrimmage this month and another one in May.”