Aurora Greenmen athletes have never shied away from the challenges of learning a new sport. Aurora’s list of athletic programs continues to grow by having a lacrosse season for the first time in school history.
“It’s a day I did not think would ever come but I am so thrilled that this is happening,” Aurora High School speech pathologist Megan Janzig told The Weekly Villager. “I am absolutely thrilled and have a sense of pride in our community that so many people have rallied behind it. Not just the school board and the parents but other sports are very encouraging as well.”
The Greenmen will have a boys and girls’ lacrosse team this season but they both will operate as club sports since it is the first year of existence. Despite being only a club sport, the teams are subject to the same rules and regulations that any other varsity lacrosse team experiences under the Ohio High School Athletic Association bylaws. Janzig said that the hope is that the school will adopt lacrosse as a varsity sport next year.
The teams will still be eligible for postseason play and are still figuring out their schedules as the girls have only scheduled 12 games and the boys only have seven games on their calendar.
The boys’ team will be headed by Mark Adams and Kent State University graduate student Megan Kozar will act as the head coach for the girls’ team.
For Janzig, this spring season has been the culmination of six years of hard work to establish a lacrosse program in the City of Aurora.
Although Janzig never played lacrosse herself while attending Nordonia High School, she developed an interest in the sport because she saw how many similarities it shared with hockey, a sport that her children played.
“I do not know if it is the physicality or the way the set-up of the game is with the players and what not but I do think hockey players tend to lean to play lacrosse in the offseason and that is exactly what my kids did,” she said.
Although her children were interested in playing lacrosse, Janzig said she realized Aurora did not have a youth lacrosse program they could participate in. While her children attended Saint Rita School in Solon, Janzig and her husband, Jeff, set up a lacrosse program in the Catholic Youth Organization in 2018.
In the first year of existence, there was only one CYO lacrosse team, but the participation numbers greatly increased the following year and the CYO had four teams, including a sixth, seventh and eighth grade team.
“I think it just shows there is a reason why it is the fastest growing sport in America,” noted Janzig. “When kids get that adrenaline rush from lacrosse, I do not know if it is the running, the checking, the goals or the speed, but it is just kind of addicting to them.”
Janzig acknowledged that the rise of lacrosse paused during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and when it returned in 2021, the CYO only had three teams.
Things improved in the next year as the Aurora Youth Lacrosse League was founded through the Ohio Northern Lacrosse League, the largest youth lacrosse league in the State of Ohio.
According to Janzig, the sport continued gaining steam and reached the high school ranks last year when several students wanted to play high school lacrosse at Aurora. That group of students attended a school board meeting and advocated to the school board to approve lacrosse as Aurora’s newest athletic program.
“It took a long time,” Janzig said. “We just tried to get things organized last year and by the time summer rolled around, we looked at numbers and the financial situation and our school board voted it as a club sport for this coming season.”
Janzig also gave credit to Athletic Director Paul Powers, who has helped both teams fill their schedules and purchase the necessary equipment.
While only a few members of each team have played lacrosse through either CYO or the NOLL, most of those players are underclassmen.
“We definitely have a bunch of rookies out there, but it is nice to see some of the younger kids take on a leadership role because they have had experience playing with the youth league,” noted Janzig.
The Aurora girls team’s season will begin when they hit the road and take on Portage County rival Kent Roosevelt’s junior varsity team on April 5 while the boys’ season is scheduled to begin when they face Chardon’s junior varsity team on April 12 at Chardon Memorial Field.
