For the Love of Lacrosse

Staff photo by Steve Muscatello

Jake Babel launches a shot on goal during a recent practice at Harman Park in New Ulm.

Body checking.

The danger of being hit in the face by a hard, fast moving object.

Must be a hockey game, right? Don't be so sure.

Over the last year, a group of New Ulm juniors and seniors have decided to take up an alternative summer sport other than baseball.

The Harman Lacrosse League, as it's known by the 20-some athletes who participate in the sport, was organized by Josh Ruenger, Adam Macho, and Jake Babel, among several others, and is catching on among the youth in New Ulm.

The league consists of four teams, with each team having five players who play at a time, and according to Ruenger, they play an indoor style of the sport.

Staff photo by Steve Muscatello

Josh Ruenger (center) maneuvers into a shooting position while babel defends on the play.

"There's two different versions of lacrosse," Ruenger said. "There's outdoor lacrosse, which is played on a much wider field. But we play a version of indoor lacrosse. It's basically like hockey with five guys on each side."

Macho said he has seen the sport played on television either at the collegiate or professional level, so the prospect of playing in a league was intriguing.

"It's one of those sports that you see on ESPN and you watch it," Macho said. "I didn't really know what was going on, but it was pretty cool to watch them. [Ruenger] here has a lacrosse stick, so we just went out and chucked the ball around and it was fun."

They play without masks or helmets, something that would be considered dangerous if they played with full contact. Depending on who you talk to, the games can be considered fairly mild with little contact, or having a lot of contact and getting rough at times.

"It's not that physical -- I mean there's a few bumps and bruises here, and we don't wind-up at each other," Ruenger said. "It's more strategy and not all brute force."

Babel says that there is a lot of aggressiveness at times, and he said he isn't afraid to knock someone down if he has to.

"I'm not afraid to put that guy, if we're both going up for the ball, against the boards," Babel said. "We got a couple of big guys that hit pretty hard."

The idea:

Ruenger moved to New Ulm from Wisconsin, and he had played the sport sparingly with his younger brother. He wasn't able to get it to catch on in Wisconsin, but once he moved to New Ulm, the sport spread like wildfire.

Staff photo by Steve Muscatello

Adam Macho, Ruenger and Babel are three of the founders of the Harman Lacrosse League in New Ulm.

"When I came here, they found out I played and they were like 'aww...we wanna play,' and then they actually got sticks," Ruenger said. "We played a bunch of pick-up sports, and people started responding well. Now we got a good 20 people I think."

The group started practicing at Harman Park in the ice hockey rinks, and as time went along, more and more people took notice and wanted to be a part of it.

Eventually, they had a draft party, similar to what you would see with the NBA or the NFL, and they even went as far as dressing up.

"Last year we had a draft party, and every guy that was involved in the draft had to dress up," Macho said. "So we all went to the thrift store and bought retro suits somewhere."

After the draft, the next task was setting up a schedule so every team had equal playing time.

"We set up a rough schedule and just play whenever we can," Ruenger said. "We have four teams, and we also have a freshman team."

Macho said that the play has improved amongst everyone, and he noticed that teams are now running plays.

"We've noticed as we started to play, that we've done more pick-and-roll plays, and we do little plays where we try to read each other and try to find out where the guy is going to roll to," Macho said.

Macho added that they now have a goaltender in the league for the first time.

"We try to get a goaltender involved, and figure out what's going on and how they actually do that stuff," Macho said. "We got one goalie, because he's nuts enough to get in the net for hockey, he's nuts enough to get in the net for us."

Some of the players intend to continue playing the sport in college.

"I'm going to St. Cloud State next year, and they have a club team, but they're in an actual league and it's a lot more competitive," Ruenger said. "And I think some of these guys are going play wherever they go."

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