Bert Church High School's fledgling lacrosse program received a financial boost last month, thanks to a $5,000 grant from the Canadian Olympic Committee's Team Canada Olympic Day program, enabling the pilot program to continue growing into the future.
Dustin Blumhagen, the Bert Church teacher who spearheaded the east Airdrie high school's lacrosse program a few years ago, said only six schools across Canada received funding through the grant and that Bert Church is pleased to be among that list of recipients.
He said the funds will specifically help the program provide additional exposure and access for female student-athletes, increase the program's ability to honour the Indigenous roots of the sport of lacrosse, and educate students further on these connections.
“Being an Indigenous sport, [lacrosse] really lends itself to that,” he said. “But we also want to encourage more girls to get into the sport. Through this, hopefully we can encourage more and bring in some girls who are playing on our basketball team, because there are a lot of connections there, or girls who are hockey or ringette players.
“That’s the beauty of lacrosse – it’s kind of open to everybody.”
A dedicated lacrosse coach and parent, Blumhagen said he's been involved in coaching lacrosse for the last decade and all three of his children are involved in the sport locally.
As a passion project, Blumhagen said he decided to try and spearhead a lacrosse program at Bert Church, and was able to implement the program as an athletic development course two years ago.
“It’s kind of a passion project I’ve tried for a few years,” he said. “We’ve been working on growing it and hopefully it will continue to grow for us.”
He noted lacrosse has been popular among Bert Church's student body already, as roughly 30 Grade 9 students were enrolled in the class this past school year. The group conducted daily training sessions as one of their scheduled classes, focusing on individualized player development.
“We ran it as [Grade 10] only the first year and then we did it as a [Grade 9] only option this year,” Blumhagen said. “We’re opening it up a little more next year so we can hopefully have a really great core group of athletes, which we do.”
In terms of how he'd like to see the program evolve in the coming years, Blumhagen has a few different ideas. He mentioned he'd like to see more outreach-related initiatives, such as the Bert Church athletes presenting and hosting lacrosse clinics at Airdrie-area middle schools and elementary schools to introduce the younger students to the sport.
He also said he'd like to collaborate with other high-school lacrosse programs, such as the National Sport Academy in Calgary, to field competitive matches and provide a way for the Bert Church players to gain some additional competition experience.
“This year, the group I had in Grade 9, about two-thirds of them had never actually played before,” he said. “That was awesome, but you need challenges. We did a lot of game play and smaller things and got the two groups to work together a few days a week.”
Blumhagen said he also has some lacrosse-related connections in the United States, as he's a US Lacrosse-certified level 2 women’s field lacrosse coach and goes there every year for a national convention. Highlighting these connections, he mentioned the possibility of connecting the Bert Church lacrosse athletes with American lacrosse players.
“I’m hoping they can come across and we’ll meet up in Lethbridge or something, and do some fun exhibition games between us, and work together that way,” he said.
For more information on the grant the Bert Church lacrosse program received, visit olympic.ca/press/coc-unveils-inaugural-team-canada-olympic-day-grant-recipients/
