School lacrosse fate remains in limbo

The debate over making lacrosse a sanctioned high school sport advanced slightly at Monday’s meeting, as administration and the local Northern Siege Youth Lacrosse Association inch toward an acceptable agreement.

But it won’t be an easy sell, at least not in its current form.

Board member and former Cloquet superintendent Ken Scarbrough expressed strong concerns about the proposal to have Northern Siege fund all the costs for a high school lacrosse program for the next five years and how that will impact the district’s control over the potential new varsity and/or junior varsity sport.

Scarbrough said he isn’t opposed to lacrosse itself, just the unusual (for Cloquet) plan of having “an incorporated financial sponsor” that would be responsible for all costs, including coach pay and benefits, equipment, transportation, game worker fees and other costs.

As outlined in a tentative agreement, the district would hire the coach but the lacrosse association would donate money equivalent to salary plus benefits to the school district.

Scarbrough recalled various coaching controversies over his time as a superintendent, and wondered what would happen if the association and the district found themselves on different sides of an issue.

“I’m just wondering if we’re better off supporting it ourselves,” Scarbrough said. “Putting substantial fees and maybe the financial sponsor could help pay those, but it’s the school district’s program.”

A potential roadblock are the girls lacrosse numbers, which are not currently strong enough for a Cloquet-Esko-Carlton program. The lacrosse association is reaching out to see if the current Hermantown/Proctor cooperative high school girls lacrosse team would be willing to accept CEC players, making it a five-school cooperative.

Boys numbers are high enough to make a CEC team, said activities director Paul Riess, but the district can’t add a boys team without adding a girls team or it would be in violation of Title IX, which mandates equal opportunity to both men and women to participate in sports.

“We would not be able to consider it unless Proctor and Hermantown said ‘yes,’” Riess told the board.

Superintendent Michael Cary said the group of administrators and Northern Siege supporters are trying to answer all the board’s questions and other concerns before bringing it to a vote. Scarbrough provided him with an entire page of questions to take back to the group working on the cooperative agreement, which Riess previously said is modeled on what some other districts in the area have done.

In northern Minnesota, Duluth East, Duluth Marshall, Hermantown and Grand Rapids all offer lacrosse as a varsity sport.

CEC fielded a boys lacrosse club team this year. CEC also offers boys volleyball as a club sport currently. Lacrosse is a spring sport for both boys and girls in Minnesota.

In other matters:

• School board members voted unanimously in favor of bonding for up to $5.5 million to be used for planned maintenance projects over the next 10 years. The bonds will be paid off with long-term facilities maintenance money from the state.

• All the major dirt work was finished last week at the Cloquet High School athletic complex, facilities and grounds director Dylan Carlson reported to the board Monday. Workers are now installing drain pipes and drain tiles, and expect to install turf on the football/soccer field in mid-July, weather permitting.

Carlson is onsite daily, he said. Board member Hawk Huard encouraged him to invite school custodians to some of the work meetings, so they have firsthand knowledge of the project.