K-8 Cedar Crest Youth Girls Lacrosse club teams develop athletes

Lacrosse isn’t one of the major sports for young people in Central Pennsylvania, but the Cedar Crest Youth Girls Lacrosse club is trying to change that.

This season, the club expanded into a fourth, even younger team. Now, teams are divided into kindergarten to second grade, third and fourth grades, fifth and sixth grades, and seventh and eighth grades.

Lynn Lechleitner, one of the coaches for the seventh- and eighth-grade team, said the program was revamped several years ago to add more structure and intensity. It has only grown since then.

“We were trying to get kids out and excited about playing the sport,” she said. “So, just getting interest levels high, getting people interested, and trying to get kids to buy in. That was really the focus at the start — just get sticks in kids’ hands.”

Lechleitner said beyond the basics of working together that come with team sports, lacrosse also teaches kids determination. It’s a unique sport that is played in the air and with sticks. It’s also higher-scoring than some other games, so players have to be ready to accept a goal scored against them and turn around to get the point back.

A strong youth program can bring even more athletes into the sport, she said. The club now has over 80 girls playing.

“It sparks interest in other kids to be part of something that’s fun and growing,” Lechleitner said. “I also think it is beneficial to the high school because you have girls that have been playing, so you’re sending kids with experience up to the high school. In the past, the high school was trying to recruit kids and get kids to come out, but now the kids are going and entering the high school with experience.”

Club president and lacrosse parent Ashley Bierman has two daughters playing for the club, and one who aged out and now plays on the high school team. She said the team is getting stronger each year, and it’s translating to a stronger high school team, too.

“I feel like every year, our teams manage to break records or do better than the year before. I don’t know how,” Bierman said. “They just get better and better, and our coaches are stronger every year. I’m just so proud of them, all of them.”

One of the things keeping these girls coming back for more club lacrosse is the social environment, which Bierman described as “so supportive.”

“Our girls celebrate each other and celebrate every single personal win. They love each other. They are sisters. I can’t even say enough wonderful things about our girls,” she said. “We have strong women coaching these girls, and they are building strong young women that lift each other up, and it’s awesome to see.”

Eighth-grader Lynken Bechtold started playing lacrosse in clinics when she was in third grade and joined the youth league in fourth grade.

“I had a lot of fun with the clinics, and I made a lot of new friends there, so we all stuck with it together,” she said.

Bechtold said joining the league has taught her to work on her skills away from the structured practice time. She has a rebounder and a goal in her backyard to hone her skills in her free time.

A triple-sport athlete also playing basketball and field hockey, Bechtold said she plans to continue with lacrosse after middle school, along with the many friends she made on the field.

“Socially, I met all of my new friends there,” she said. “A lot of my friends now I met through lacrosse.”