The sport of lacrosse is slowly making its way to Wisconsin as more young players take up a stick at an early age.

Though it’s one of the country’s oldest sports, lacrosse only began taking shape in Wisconsin in the early 2000s.

In 2001, the Madison Area Lacrosse Association, now known at Badgerland Lacrosse, formed with only a handful of interested teams.

Since then the club sport has nearly tripled in size and expanded to include teams in La Crosse and Watertown.

Sun Prairie is one of those club teams with four different age groups ranging from U8 to U14.

“It’s a very fast paced sport,” said Karen Dwyer, president of the Sun Prairie Lacrosse Club, “It’s one of my favorite sports to watch and it kind of combines, soccer, football, and hockey.”

Her son, Cole Dwyer, and his teammate Jackson Jerszak both started playing in 2nd grade.

“I’ve tried a lot of sports but none have really stuck with me like lacrosse has,” said Cole Dwyer.

Jerzak says he sometimes has to explain the sport to his other friends in his sixth grade class.

“Not everyone really gets chances to play this new sport because they don’t really know anything about it,” said Jerzak.

Though both boys are focused on playing the game in high school, many parents are already thinking ahead to the collegiate level.

“There’s a lot of money in this sport to be handed out because not a lot of kids are aware of it,” Karen Dwyer said. “There’s a lot of scholarships available and we’ve been told since the very beginning.”

Nathan Kapp is a Middleton High School senior who is seeing the benefits of the sport. Kapp has received a Division I scholarship to play lacrosse at Jacksonville University next fall.

“I definitely continue to see the sport growing here in Wisconsin,” said Kapp. “It’s been growing nonstop since I started playing.”

When he was younger, Kapps says there wasn’t as many opportunities as there are now. Most of his early lessons about the game were from videos on Youtube.

“Back then it was all self-research, especially where I grew up,” he said. “Now there’s multiple outlets to learn stuff.”

While the game is growing rapidly in the Madison area, it struggles at times compared to the more popular sports.

“Because parents here did not grow up playing it like they did maybe soccer and baseball,” explains Dwyer.

A big challenge is finding coaches who understand the game and could teach it at the youth level.

“We do struggle every year to try and find parents that can help out from a coaching perspective,” she said.

Sanford Erdahl, the varsity coach for Middleton High School, played lacrosse for Stoughton before taking on a coaching role.

“I think there was roughly 12 teams in the state so there wasn’t too much competition,” Erdahl remembered. “It was pretty much everyone trying to learn the sport together.”

Erdahl believes there are nearly 45 teams in the state actively competing.

He says a growth in coaching and a relationship with the WIAA is what it needs to be successful in the area.

“It’s having enough experienced coaches at the varsity level,” said Erdahl. “We’ve actually taken quite a few strides to get us aligned with WIAA regulations and guidelines.

Still, the future remains bright for lacrosse in Madison.

“I definitely continue to see the sport growing here in Wisconsin,” Kapp said.