The Malibu High and Middle schools lacrosse club boys’ teams, both among the best in the Pacific Coast League after only four and six years respectively, are poised to move up from a “club sport” to fully sanctioned CIF status by next year, director and coach Josh Waldbaum said.
So, for the final year as a club, Malibu began competition this month among 20 school teams in the Southern California Lacrosse Association. Games are played two days a week, alternating between the Malibu High campus and Newberry Park High for the high school teams, and Malibu High and various other area school grounds for the middle graders.
“Lacrosse is a great spectator sport,” Waldbaum said, “and we urge all Malibu parents and sports fans to come and watch these kids play.
“We’ve got 25 boys in high school play and 30 in middle school competition, both teams with strong winning records,” he said. “And the sport has generated enough interest that we’re planning a youth program for third- to fifth-grade youngsters, also starting this month.
“Malibu High won league championships in 2003 and in 2005, when the team was undefeated, and we came in third in the state championships last year. We’re definitely the best team in the league. Over the past four years we’ve had 48 wins and five losses.”
With 13 seniors graduating last year, however, 2006 will be a rebuilding year for the team, he said. Five of the graduates were national all-Americans who have gone on to play in college.
The middle school team, now in its seventh year of play, has an even more impressive winning record than Malibu High, with an overall 60-4 win/loss ratio. The team has won the league championship four out of the six years it has competed, Waldbaum said.
Derrick Ostryzk is in his third year as head coach of the middle school team. Nick Masciangelo and coach Steve O’Neill assist him. Assistant coach under Waldbaum at Malibu High is Geoff Watson, who played for four years at Harvard.
Waldbaum, who formerly coached the sport at Pepperdine, brought lacrosse to Malibu youngsters after briefly filling in as a Little League baseball coach for his son’s team. More at home with his old lacrosse stick than a baseball bat, he began to use it to throw grounders and fly balls to the youths. Most of them didn’t even know what the stick was for, and their curiosity led to an interest in playing and eventually to Waldbaum’s program at the Malibu schools.
Although not well known in the Western states, lacrosse has been popular in the East for many years. It is now becoming increasingly played in schools and universities west of Colorado, particularly in Oregon and Northern California.
History shows lacrosse to be the first true American sport, Waldbaum said. Native American tribes played it almost 200 years ago. The Cherokees called it “the little brother of war” because it was considered excellent military training. A team consisted of hundreds of players, often an entire village or tribe. The goals were often miles apart and since most players couldn’t get anywhere near the ball, they concentrated on using the stick to hit opponents, or each other. It has since become somewhat more civilized.
According to most accounts, the first Europeans to see it played were French explorers, who thought it resembled a form of field hockey called jeu de la crosse, which is the likely origin of the name. Early in the 19th century, Europeans in Canada began playing the game, but the first step toward making it an organized sport came when George Beers of the Montreal Lacrosse Club perfected written rules.
Beers, now known as “the father of lacrosse,” also replaced the original hair-stuffed deerskin ball used by the Native Americans with a hard rubber ball, and designed a stick that was better suited to catching the ball and throwing it accurately.
The next Malibu High home game is March 26 against Calabasas, and the next home game for the middle school team is March 19 against Westside. A full schedule of games is posted on the Internet at www.malibulacrosse.com.