Battling a Football State of Mind - Nebraska stories

(even-paced rock music) (distant whistle blows) (faint speaking) (cheering and clapping) COACH: Run it down the field and get into attack mode. (cheering) KURT CARLSON: A lot of people still, you ask about Lacrosse in Nebraska, and they have no clue that we have 10 high school teams going on right now. NARRATOR: In Nebraska, high school football has dominated the headlines, the attention, and the participation numbers for more than 50 years. However, in recent history, we've seen a growth in the variety of sports being offered. Soccer, for example, was recognized as a high school sport in 1988. It steadily climbed to more than 5,000 student athletes participating throughout Nebraska. However, soccer is not the fastest growing sport in America. That title goes to lacrosse, a sport that's prevalent on both coasts, and making a move to the Midwest. (upbeat rock music) (cheering) NARRATOR: With traditional sports owning the limelight in Nebraska, lacrosse is battling for recognition. CARLSON: Baseball and lacrosse kinda compete with each other, so I know there's a lot of kids going out for the sport, a lot of kids get cut. So, in baseball they cut a lot of kids. Some of those kids that can't play baseball now, looking for another avenue to play. (cheering) GRANT FABRY: Football's more of a contact and collision sport. You got your really head-to-head, you know, linemen just going right at it, and lacrosse is more of a contact finesse sport. (cheering) NARRATOR: The growth of lacrosse in Nebraska will depend largely on developing players, like Millard West's Cameron Burke. CAMERON BURKE: I wanted to be a difference maker in it, I wanted to be somebody that was like, that is really good. FABRY: He played football, and it wasn't his thing, and he played basketball for a few years, and it turns out lacrosse is his number one. CARLSON: His sophomore year he kinda switched over and really, really caught on to lacrosse, and he put his full effort into it, and you can clearly see it, he's showing up, he's putting the extra effort in, he's asking a lot of questions, so it's pretty exciting to have a kid really grasp on to the sport and really wanna excel at it. NARRATOR: Cameron's dad, Dave Burke was a scholarship player for Tom Osborne's Huskers, in 1982 through 1984. DAVE BURKE: I coached him playing football and basketball, growing up, you know, as he grew up, and so, those were things he kinda gravitated towards, one or the other. He moved around and really, it was, ya know, just something he picked up and started loving. FABRY: You'd think from someone who played, ya know, football for the Huskers and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ya know, you'd think the dad would say, "Football, football, football." But, ya know, it's almost the completely opposite. CAMERON: I think he really appreciates that I'm doing something different, 'cause I'm the first one in my family to play lacrosse, and he really supports it. DAVE BURKE: I still remember the first time I tried to catch with a lacrosse stick. I threw it and missed it, missed it, missed it, I thought, gosh, ya know, I'm a decent athlete. And I finally had to scootch the basket all the way till it was almost like a baseball glove before I could catch it. So, as they run down the field and just reach their stick up there and snag it, I thought wow, he's getting really good at this game, and I was like, "Well," ya know, "if that's what ya love, "keep doing it." FABRY: Cam really loves the sport and he wants to play, and I expect big, big things out of him coming up. CAMERON: There's no limit to what you can do with the sport. You take what you wanna do with it. You can create yourself in any athlete you want. DAVE BURKE: There's plenty of room for other sports to be on the lacrosse team. I think they've got football players, track athletes, they've got wrestlers, and so, I mean, if you wanna run around with a helmet and a stick and chase the ball then I think they'll have ya. (whistle blows) (cheering) NARRATOR: While lacrosse is growing across America, Division one programs remain almost exclusively on the East coast. Big 10 schools like Ohio State and Maryland, compete with private schools, like Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. The efforts to develop the sport in Nebraska are ongoing. DAVE BURKE: It's starting to grow a little bit here, but again, it's all about exposure, and I think they're providing both, both young boys and girls the opportunity to get exposure to it, and the more that we can draw attention to it, the better. FABRY: We wanna see success across the board whether it's at the high school level, under five, U19, anything. CARLSON: At Millard West we have about 70 kids playing right now. And if we get a hundred kids next year, we'll have a varsity team and three JV teams, we'll keep growing the sport and keep growing the, the team on our side, and let kids play. (even-toned music)