August 6th for me personally was a day of very strong and mixed emotions.  It was at 9am, and I sat in the 16-foot rental truck loaded my life; it was towing my car, and we headed north to Hwy 2 out of Snohomish and back to North Carolina.  I reached I-5 and headed south looking over into Everett where I could see the top of Comcast Arena.  I hit the 405 corridor driving past Lake Washington HS, then through Bellevue down to I-90, through Issaquah, the pass, and out toward Wenatchee and Tri-Cities.  It was hard to make this portion of the drive to say the least.  In my brief two years out here, I never experienced a lacrosse community like I did out in Washington.

MERCER ISLAND, WA, Aug. 17, 2010—This small island community of nearly 23,000 people made national news last week when its high school varsity lacrosse team was ranked 21st in the nation (out of some 3,000) and fourth on the west coast by the sport’s governing body, US Lacrosse.

As if there weren't enough folks moving out of the Lacrosse scene from Washington, another Washingtonian takes a coaching position with some prestige and international mystery as well.  Dan Aas (Tahoma High School, ’03) has been hired as the Head Lacrosse Coach for Exeter University in England.

Seattle has come close in the past, losing in the final championship game for the Elite team four years ago to a team from Maryland, a 2007 loss to Tourney winner St. Ignatious, a one-goal loss two Januarys ago for the same team AND a Space Needle Shootout OT loss in 2009.  Now, Seattle Starz has captured the title of Adrenaline Tournament Champions.  The all-sophomore team defeated 17 other teams to become the first tournament champion from Washington at any Adrenaline event.  Aside from the hair-raising performance of heart from the Sophomores, the Freshmen also did quite well, losing in the Bronze medal game to Saskatoon.  The talent in Washington earned a few more stripes this summer.

Manchester, England - The World Lacrosse Championships and festival will unfold from July 15-24th, 2010 boasting 30 teams competing for the title of World Champion.  The 30 teams have been organized into 7 divisions, based on colors.  Top-tier teams will compete in the Blue Division, Such as reigning world champion Canada, USA, Australia, Iroquois Nationals, England and now, Japan.  The Blue division game schedule is based on the seedings from the 2006 Championships and the draw undertaken the ILF meeting in Lahti, Finland.  The other divisions have been structured reflecting performance at the 2006 Championships, also accommodating the new FIL nation members. The divisions comprise of 4 teams who play each other in pool games to determine relative positions, and then ranked from 1st-4th from Round Robin competition.

 Hey everyone my name is Nick Lacy and I play for Bainbridge Island, this summer Fred asked me to write a story about my recruiting trips. Every summer kids from all over the country go up and down the east coast to recruiting camps, playing on teams from every area of the country. This summer I played with west coast starz, and also Seattle starz. West coast starz is a top ten recruiting team in the nation they pull from every starz program on the west coast. I went to the Yale bulldog shootout and the Umass mid summer classic with west coast starz and then to the brine shootout with my Seattle starz team.

In front of a sold out crowd in Manchester the two heavy weights of world lacrosse faced-off.  The fans were awash in American and Canadian attire.  The pressure was on USA to bring gold home and avenge the loss in 2006.