Geoff Lister/The Ubyssey

It is strange that Canada’s oldest sport appears to be a product of the sports created after it. It combines the speed and power of football and hockey with the endurance and strategy of soccer and basketball. We are talking, of course, about field lacrosse.
While UBC boasts varsity teams in all of the aforementioned sports, field lacrosse—Canada’s official summer sport—is noticeably absent. A few dedicated lacrosse lovers, however, are doing their best to change that.

“Last year, in February, I was missing the sport a lot and I got together with a few guys I knew and started a lacrosse club,” said Dan Millar, a second-year mechanical engineering student and co-founder of the newly minted Thunderbird Lacrosse Club (TLC).
“Mostly through word of mouth we’ve been growing the club, expanding it and trying to find new players,” he said.

This past November, the TLC was officially constituted by the AMS—thanks in large part to the passion and vision of Millar and two of his friends, Sam Neuharth and David Hammond. Millar said there had been previous attempts to form a lacrosse club on campus, but for various reasons all of those ventures came up short.

While this group has had comparatively more success establishing a lacrosse club than others, the fledgling team still faces many challenges. In addition to constantly looking for new recruits and “struggling at the goalie position,” procuring competition has been quite a chore.

“We were working on setting up games with Washington State; unfortunately that fell through due to a field-use issue,” Millar said. “We’ve been working to get playing with other universities in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association. There are a few teams; Simon Fraser has a team, and so does the University of Western Washington. We’ve been trying to get some games with some local clubs too, but at the moment we’re really not quite ready for a competitive schedule. Hopefully, next year we’ll be really ready for that.”

The new club has high hopes for the future. Millar and his fellow TLC executives hope one day to see the club join the varsity ranks at UBC.

“That’s the ultimate goal,” said Millar. “I don’t know how long it’ll take, but I’d love to see it happen. I’d love to see it happen while I’m still here at UBC.”

The club consists of 20 men and women with varying degrees of experience and talent, and is constantly looking to add to that number. “You don’t need any experience to come out; we’d love to have every player we could grab. A few of the executive members even started out without any [experience],” said Millar.

“There are very few people I know who have tried lacrosse and it was their sport within a year.”

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