North Central Wolves lacrosse club is planning an overnight trip to a NLL game to show kids and parents the action in Canada's national summer game.
They're not the big, bad wolves you're supposed to be afraid of - in fact, the supporters of these Wolves want you to join up and play with them.
That’ s the hope of the folks behind the locally-based North Central Wolves Lacrosse Club as they prepare for a month-end overnight road-trip to show local residents and youngsters the fast-pace of professional lacrosse action.
In only its second season in the Lac La Biche area, the club's organizers say the more people who know about the sport, the more interest they get. This year’ s team registration - which is taking place now - has seen membership double over last year.
“We have 60 registered so far, last year we had 30 total,” said Wolves novice coach and association treasurer Bill Britton, explaining that the young players range in ages 5 to 14 in levels from mini-tyke up to peewee. “It’ s fast-growing. It really caught on ... and we want to get more kids interested.”
To do that, the club has organized a bus trip to Calgary for the April 29 National Lacrosse League game between the Calgary Roughnecks and the Saskatchewan Rush. The game is the last regular season match of the league’ s 18-week season before playoffs start in early May. The Rush, whose franchise once called Edmonton home, have already secured a playoff spot in the 9-team league, and Calgary is in a tough three-way battle for one of the remaining two playoff spots in the West Division.
“There’ s lots of excitement, lots of action,” said Britton, talking about the sport of lacrosse and this season's race to the NLL playoffs. “Anyone who comes on our trip is sure to see some great action.”
Tickets for the road trip are $75 each and will include a direct bus ride to the Calgary rink, raffle prizes on the trip, plus game tickets. A block of hotel rooms at a Calgary hotel have been reserved for the trip. Britton said he’ d love to see some families making the event.
“It’ s for the kids to see the games, and for parents to get an idea of what the sport is all about,” he said, explaining that even though it is Canada’ s official summer sport, lacrosse has only recently been getting more attention. “We really want our community to see what a great sport this is and how much fun it is for the kids.”
Tickets for the trip are available at the Tirecraft Oasis Sales and Service on Main Street and at Britton’ s Your Independent Grocer.
Organizers say 30 of the available 50 tickets have already been sold.
Registration for teams in the North Central Wolves association has been extended to the end of April. More information can be found on the North Central Wolves facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ncwolveslacrosse/ or email [email protected].
