The inaugural season for the Janie Twohander Lacrosse program in Wallaceburg wrapped up in style today.
The free program was organized for four to six-year-old girls by former Wallaceburg resident Brian DeWagner and his wife June at Wallaceburg District Secondary School.
Today (June 22) marked “fairy day” for the girls… and the organizer as well.
“We did fairy day once before and we won before a ball even hit the grass,” DeWagner said, while he adjusted the fairy wings and tutu he was wearing. “We decided to do it again. I think we’ll incorporate it in future years too. The kids get a kick out of it.”
DeWagner said the fun theme for day was a great way to cap off the initial program in Wallaceburg, which got an “amazing” response.
“We started with a program in Sarnia last fall,” he said. “We wanted to do something free. It’s not really about lacrosse, I mean we try to incorporate the skills into what we do, but it is more about making them love it and be excited about it.”
DeWagner said the program started last fall just in Sarnia with about a dozen kids. Now, the program has grown into Wallaceburg and includes about 60 children between the two programs.
DeWagner said the response has been fantastic.
“We get messages from parents saying that their daughters had slept with their sticks or my daughter has played in the back yard more than my son has,” he said. “You’re not going to learn the game for an hour every week at a practice, you learn it in your back yard with your friends. These girls are sleeping with their sticks and bringing them in the back yard, playing everyday and playing with their friends, then I think we’ve accomplished something.”
DeWagner said he used to work at the athletic department at the University of Michigan, where he initially started the idea for these type of programs.
“We want it to be free and accessible and we always want it to be free and accessible,” he said. “To help develop it we wrote away to about 300 plus American universities with lacrosse programs, we got stuff back from the University of Michigan, Virginia, Georgetown, University of Findlay in Ohio, University of Oregon. They like the idea of the target population… it is really an under served one, and it doesn’t cost anything.”
DeWagner said based on the response they have had, the program will likely expand in the fall.
“The plan will be to make this one a little bit bigger in Wallaceburg,” he said. “We’ll run multiple sessions and have stuff for older girls. Ideally the idea was to plant seeds and start with the youngest group. That’s why we started with the four to six. On any type of competitive level, it doesn’t start until the third grade but these girls will have been together two or three years, so hopefully they would have learned the game a little bit by then. At that point it will start a club status, it’ll mostly be this… it’s mostly fun. One or two times a year we might jump to a tournament.”
DeWagner said he hopes the girls eventually get into minor lacrosse programs when they get older.
“If it keeps getting bigger there is no reason why they can’t play minor lacrosse as well,” he said. “Our emphasis is field lacrosse, but hopefully they can make that transition. Wallaceburg has a pretty awesome legacy for that.”
The program will take a break for the summer, before starting back up in September.
“We’ll keep delivering it for free for as long as we can,” DeWagner said.
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Here are some photos from today:
