From l – r: Hunter Combe, Spencer Bishop and Jace Griffeth.
Courtesy Jason Williams
LOGAN — The community has an opportunity to help a team at Utah State University that has gone above and beyond in their performance this season.
The USU Men’s Lacrosse team has qualified for the Nationals and it’s the third time in program history that this has happened. They are fundraising on GoFundMe.com for travel expenses to get the entire 35 member team to Round Rock, Texas to represent USU and compete against the top teams in the country.
And hopefully bring home a championship.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Monday, our guests were teammates Hunter Combe, Spencer Bishop and Jace Griffeth. Bishop talked about what it takes to qualify for the nationals.
“So, Utah State Lacrosse right now, we’re competing in the, it’s called the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse Conference with…I think there (are) eight teams in our conference, and I think in the entire league, which is the MCLA, there’s about 75 teams. And so that’s all across the country, and only 16 teams are actually invited to this national tournament. So it’s pretty huge for the program,” Bishop said.
He said it’s a lot of travel and a lot of time that players have to put into it, and it’s something they have to fund themselves for the most part.
Griffeth talked about how he got involved.
“I actually grew up playing soccer most of my life, and then my sophomore year I got cut. And so I was like looking for something else to do, and some buddies were like ‘hey you might as well come play lacrosse’. I was 17, junior year, I was like ‘sure, might as well’. So I picked up a stick and went to practice…and just immediately fell in love with how fast paced it is, how physical it is and just how fun it was,” Griffeth explained.
Combe said it was a similar situation for him, “I played football and basketball, mostly, growing up. Then I didn’t hit my growth spurt, I was on the smaller size compared to a lot of kids, so football, that was tough, and basketball, if you don’t have that natural size is hard. So my football coach was one of my good friend’s Dad, and he got me into it. He was like ‘hey my son plays Lacrosse, you should come out. I think your speed, even though you’re smaller…you can kind of make up for that.”
You can get more information on their Facebook page: facebook @ usumenslacrosse