Sunday Sit Down: Mountain State Lacrosse Club President Jay Rodgers

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va (WDTV) - The Mountain State Lacrosse Club was created back in February 2020, “Well I’d say five, six years ago, we had several kids in the area, girl mainly that were playing club lacrosse for a Pennsylvania team and they did that for three, four five years and they learned a lot, got to go to a lot of amazing places, some excellent coaching and things like that but they were kind of missing that playing for their state, the whole idea was just to grow the game, grow the game of lacrosse, give the opportunity for girls and boys to be able to play and play more than just the short spring season,” said Mountain State Lacrosse Club President Jay Rogers.

Being able to represent their state has been huge for the young athletes, “I think all of us parent wise have been really, really proud and a little bit shocked to see how much it does mean to them, you know we’ve watched them, they’ve went to tournaments and carried the state flag, they’ve had when someone says where you from, you know we don’t know it and they yell, West Virginia, it’s good to see, it’s good to see them carry that pride,” said Rogers.

The club is one of the only of it’s kind in the state, “We believe this is one of the main ones, there has been some traction in the eastern panhandle, I don’t really know where they’ve gotten, our idea would be to take this platform across the state at some point we’d like to see this mountain state club kind of referred to as north central and then we’d like to see an eastern and a northern and a southern,” said Rogers.

They hope to expand the club, as well as the sport as a whole more throughout the entire state, “One of the things that we have all said is we don’t want to grow to fast to big and miss out on some things right now one of our immediate plans is to start a middle school program that really is really where we see the benefit and the overall success of the individual players is getting those kids at that fifth, sixth grade level and getting them n here and letting them learn the sport early,” Rogers said.

The interest for a middle school league comes from a couple of places, “It’s really come from two areas, one is that they usually have a sibling hats older and it’s cute some of them are toddler and they come with this little stick toddling behind you know their brother or sister and they want to play, or what we have found because we have started this kind of melting pot here in north central west Virginia, were getting some parents that played because they were from the eastern short of Maryland or they were from New York or they were from the mid west and now they’re trying to introduce their kids to the game, so its kind of coming from both of those angles right now,” said Rogers.

The future of the sport in West Virginia looks promising, “It’s unlimited what the possibilities are, lacrosse to me is a game that you know a lot of different, you don’t have to be super fast you don’t have to be this incredible athlete you can be a student of the game, you can understand it, tis a sport that mixes so many other sports, I think and that come and watch it, walk away and they come back and i think you know it just needs more exposure,” Rogers said.

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