(Inside Lacrose Photo: Jaclyn Borowski)

Every once in a while, you’re reminded about the true power of a lacrosse stick. Not how it can be used to shoot and score, or defend, or perform a trick, but how once it’s in someone’s hands it can change their life.

I was reminded of that at the July session of the Inside Lacrosse Recruiting Invitational.

It’s not often that someone comes up to you and says, “I want to tell you how Inside Lacrosse changed my life,” but that’s what Will Forte said as he grabbed me to share a story about his family.

Will had been given a stick at the 2013 NCAA Championship to give to his son, William. Duke beat Syracuse, 16-10, and Will Forte’s band had been playing outside Lincoln Financial Field. Will is a founding member of the B Street Band, celebrating the music of Bruce Springsteen for nearly 40 years as the longest-running tribute band in the world.

Jeff Dudley, then IL’s Director of Sales, was a fan and gave him a stick to take home to his son.

“Do your kids play lacrosse?” Will Forte recalls Jeff asking. “Take this home, see if he likes it.”

He gave him this stick:

Next thing, William, then about 14, was in the backyard practicing. He was always smart but didn’t play a lot of sports until then.

“He was out there five hours a day,” Will Forte says. “It would be 20 degrees. … I’d have to call him in at midnight.”

“That lacrosse stick,” he pauses. “It just made sense to him.”

Soon after, Forte was receiving equipment recommendations and trying out for the local rec team. Now, entering his senior year of high school, he's emerged as a top-tier player.

Forte was picked to the Uncommitted Showcase Game at the ILRI — he was warming up for the game when his dad and I met — and he had a great week for the NJLC club, leading them in scoring with 12 goals and three assists over five games. Read his profile and evaluation in the IL Recruiting Database here.

He has a few offers to play in college, and he wants to attend a school for engineering.

The rest of the Forte clan has picked up the lacrosse bug. His younger sister, who was about 6 when Will was given his first stick, is playing rec lacrosse. His now-8-year-old little brother, just a toddler then, can’t put down his stick. The entire family is now a “lacrosse family” four years later.

“Our whole family has taken to the game, and it all happened because of Inside Lacrosse...We wouldn’t have any of this, the enjoyment we got from this game, if it wasn’t for that stick,” Will Forte says.

This isn’t written to say how great we are. I had nothing to do with it, nor did anyone else who currently works here. It’s written because we all, at one point, picked up a stick for the first time. We weren’t all born with one in our hands, but for all of us at Inside Lacrosse and most reading this, once we got one in our hands it changed our lives.

For me, it was my sophomore year in high school. I played ice hockey at Archbishop Curley in Baltimore. My hockey coach, Joe Latona, told me to come out for lacrosse in the spring, mostly to stay in shape for hockey. I picked up an Edge at Play-It-Again Sports in Parkville, and lacrosse has been a key part of my life since.

You can donate to the First Stick Program at US Lacrosse, which “lies in the belief that a child's first lacrosse stick not only serves as a means to play the sport, but is a symbol of the life-enhancing values.” You can give an old stick to your neighbor who has young kids. You can take it to a local rec center.

Just don’t throw it in the trash. Because you never know, you might change someone’s life with it.