Lacrosse Likely to Become Fully Funded St. Cloud District Activity

ST. CLOUD - Lacrosse in St. Cloud schools may become a fully funded district activity on Thursday night.

The school board is expected to approve funding for the sport, which would cost them roughly $50,000 a year. Lacrosse is currently sponsored by the district, but they didn't have money to pay for it when it started several years ago. Boosters and parents have fundraised for the sport.

Andrea Swanberg is the activities director at Tech High School, she says the sport is growing in Cental Minnesota.

"It's a very popular sport right now. We're looking in the Central Lakes Conference: Sauk Rapids and Sartell now have lacrosse, possibly Brainerd in the future, possibly ROCORI."

Swanberg says lacrosse can be played at Michie Field at Apollo High School and possibly at a new Tech High School in the future. Right now, both boys and girls teams play at St. Cloud State University.

"If we do eventually get a new Tech and we can have a field there, or we can play over at Apollo too, that would help because we wouldn't necessarily have to pay the field rental."

Since 2011, boys and girls lacrosse participation has grown from 77 to 159 players. Swanberg expects that number to continue growing for the next couple of years.

St. Cloud lacrosse is currently a part of the Greater West Metro Lacrosse Conference which includes teams from Buffalo, Rodgers, St. Michael, Becker, Monticello and Delano.