REGISTER NOW

By teaching solid fundamentals the experienced staff will help the players develop skills, build field awareness and game savvy. The goal is to provide the foundation that every player needs from which to build a successful lacrosse career.

This summer league is modeled after the one that Coach Kelley participated in as a youth growing up in Camillus, NY. The summers he spent in the program were some of the best of his life. The following article describes the success of the model program:
________________________________________

Summers at Shove Park
by Zach Babo on September 6, 2006

Thirty Seven Years of Lacrosse Instruction … and Counting

Nearly 15,000 Careers Begun in Shove Park Summer Rec Program

Story by: Marc Sorbello
Photos by: Charles Wainwright

The Upstate New York town of Camillus is approximately seven miles west of Syracuse. Considered to be one of the premier spots in the country for high school lacrosse, Long Island and Maryland areas are also used in the same breath, this town has been the springboard for thousands of college and professional lacrosse careers.

The town is home to the West Genesee High School Boys Varsity Lacrosse Team and legendary coaches Mike Messere and Bob Deegan. For more than 40 years the Wildcat lacrosse teams have captured 25 Section 3 titles and an unprecedented 14 New York State Boys High School Lacrosse championships in 19 appearances. The 2005 team finished 19-4 and ranked #17 in the season ending STX/Inside Lacrosse Top 25 High School rankings.

Before any of the ‘Cats pull their white socks up to their knees and don mohawks for the state championship game, their careers begin at the Shove Park Recreational Lacrosse Program run by the Town of Camillus. This six-week program (from the last week in June until the first week in August) is open to residents of the town and provides the kids with instruction and controlled scrimmages Mondays through Thursdays for at least an hour and a half a day.

Beginning in 1975 with only 13 boys ages eight to 15, the program now boasts nearly 400 boys from 7 to 18-years old in its day developmental program. The Evening Recreational Box program adds more than 20 teams worth of players spread over three divisions to Shove weeknights.

“We measure the success of the program by involvement,” said Messere, who has a 644-41 career record with the Wildcats. “The day developmental program runs from 8:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., when there’s not a lot else going on. The kids can come down and play and still be able to participate in other activities, which is why I think it works so well.”

The program’s popularity skyrocketed in its first three years, growing from the original 13 players to 400. The enrollment hangs around 400 per year and has for the past 30 years.

The High School session runs Mondays through Thursdays, starting at 8:30 a.m. and lasting until 11:00 a.m. That session is for kids in seventh through twelfth grades. Players are broken down by grade: seventh and eighth, ninth and tenth, and eleventh and twelfth, for instruction and controlled scrimmages.

The fifth and sixth-grade session also begins at 8:30 a.m. but only lasts until 10:00 a.m. The second through fourth grade session begins at 11:30 a.m. and ends the day at 1:00 p.m.

The instruction emphasizes stick skills, offensive and defensive play, shooting, and teamwork through drills and scrimmages. The first portion of the sessions are used for conditioning and fundamentals, then one-on-one drills, then scrimmages. The High School session plays on regulation goals while the younger kids play on a modified goal.

The boys are instructed by former West Genesee High School Boys Varsity players returning home from college for the summer. Some of the players back in Camillus this summer were Matt Cassalia (LeMoyne College), P.J. Burns (St. John Fisher), Marc Cizewski (LeMoyne), Pat McCormick (Hartwick College) and Tom Donahue (LeMoyne).

“It really feels good to give back to the program,” said Cizewski, the longstick middie who just finished his freshman year at LeMoyne by winning the DII national championship. “Coaches Messere and Deegan have given so much to me, so to be able to come back and coach allows me to give a little back.”

“It seems like yesterday that I was here participating in the Shove program,” said Burns, the three-year captain at St. John Fisher College who’s been coaching at Shove Park for three years now. “Coming back has made my lacrosse career a full circle.”

“For me, it’s great to come back and coach the kids where I once was and try to help them get to where I am now in my lacrosse career,” said Donahue, LeMoyne’s sophomore midfielder. “I want to help develop the kids so they can go on and possibly win a state title or college national championship. I know I wouldn’t be a national champion right now if it wasn’t for this program.”

“I remember going to the high school games and watching the varsity team and then being coached in the summer by the guys I was watching,” said LeMoyne’s Cassalia, the DII Middie of the Year. “That was really great to be coached by those guys because I looked up to them. Also, now it’s great to be able to give back to the program.”

Though the sessions are very intensive with instruction and drills, the atmosphere is loose and jovial.

“When I was playing here every day was fun,” said Donahue. “It’s a pretty laid back environment. It wasn’t work. I was just hanging out with my friends playing lacrosse. What we didn’t realize was we were learning so much all the time.”

Burns, St. John Fisher’s all-time ground ball leader, used his instruction from the Shove Park league in college.

“Coach Deegan showed me a face-off move when I was in sixth grade that I used very effectively in college,” he said. “I’ll never forget that.”

Outreach

One week a summer Craig Curry brings his family from Yarmouth, Maine to Camillus to spend time with his father, Bud. During that week, Craig’s son John, 16, gets a chance to play lacrosse in the Shove Park program. Also, during that week, Craig gets to spend time with Coaches Messere and Deegan, picking their brains about teaching and coaching lacrosse.

“They’ve been very supportive of what I’m trying to do in Yarmouth,” said Curry. “Their advice has allowed me to lay the foundation for our program.”

Since 2003, Curry’s Yarmouth Clippers have won two Maine Boys High School State Championships and finished runners-up in the other two. The Clippers are the reigning Class B Maine State Champions coming off a 17-2 season.

“Everything we do comes from the concepts I learned at the Shove Park Recreational program,” said Curry. “The concepts of discipline, teamwork and the basic stick skills are what I’m building our program on.”

Curry’s professional relationship with coaches Messere and Deegan began about six years ago at the annual National Coaching Convention. Curry, a West Genny grad, started talking regularly with Messere after that as he began building his program.

Then the Clippers started attending the Wildcat Invitational Tournament and competing against teams from Upstate New York.

“The Invitational is something our kids really look forward to,” said Curry. “It gives them an opportunity to see the caliber of high school lacrosse that’s being played in other areas of the country.”

Curry, who’s brother Todd was a Syracuse All-American and a World Team player, credits his success to being able to learn at the Shove Park recreational program.

“We wouldn’t have had the organization or the practices set up as they are if it weren’t for coaches Messere and Deegan’s time and coming to Camillus and teaching with them in the summer,” said Curry, who’s summer program in Yarmouth is a microcosm of the Shove Park program. “We definitely wouldn’t be state champions.”

-------------------

Marc Sorbello is an adjunct professor of public relations writing at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University as well as a public relations professional and freelance writer. He was a member of a New York state championship lacrosse team at West Genesee High School and a member of the first lacrosse team ever at Nazareth College in Rochester.