By Mark Kitchin
It’s one thing for a lacrosse player to return home to coach and play in familiar surroundings where the sport has a following. It’s another for an athlete to take on the challenge of helping the sport in a different venue. That’s why lacrosse needs more people like Joe Cinosky.
Cinosky was a standout Mountain Lakes player who earned All-America honors at the University of Maryland. A talented, physical, 6-foot-3, 220-pound defenseman, he is one of the few lacrosse players making his professional mark on both the outdoor and indoor game. He was part of the Chesapeake Bayhawks crew that won the MLL Championship this past summer. In the winter he lines it up for Minnesota Swarm of the NLL.
However, more and more he’s making the Land of 1,000 Lakes his home. In the past few years he’s been coaching lacrosse in Minnesota at the high school level. This past, June he took over the job of coaching the club team at the University of Minnesota.
Coaching lacrosse in Minnesota may not be like coaching the sport in Iceland or Tibet or some far off land that thinks a lacrosse stick would be much better suited for netting fish, but it’s still an area that’s up for grabs in terms of determining the growth of a sport. There are around 70 high schools that play it on the sanctioned or club level. Cinosky may not be the Paul Bunyan of Minnesota lacrosse just yet, but if he continues in his interest there, in time his influence can loom almost as large.
There are biases against playing lacrosse that far north. Hockey dominates sports during the winter months. The spring season is a short one; most areas don’t thaw out until the middle of May so much of the work is done indoors. Most of the people that lived there don’t have a lacrosse background and have never seen the sport before much less played it. If they have seen it, it’s the professional indoor version which is a hybrid of what’s played at the college level.
That’s what makes someone like Cinosky a true ambassador of the sport. It means something for young athletes to gain access to an experienced player; someone who has played on a top-notch college and international level. An athlete that they can see competing in their own backyard, who is living in the area and seems comfortable with calling Minnesota – home.
It’s true that the sport is growing across the nation. More and more colleges are picking it up. More and more athletes from different parts of the country are picking up the sport and making it their preference. For that growth to continue, lacrosse needs its ambassadors and a few Paul Bunyan’s too.
Thank you for the correction. It’s been changed.