Box lacrosse has long held its roots in Canada, and now the field version of the game is seeding itself in Canadian soil.

The growth of field lacrosse is no more evident than Claremont Secondary’s Lacrosse Academy for Excellence, the heart of field lacrosse on Vancouver Island.

This weekend Claremont is hosting 12 teams from across the Pacific Northwest for their third annual Spartan Shootout. Five of the teams are junior while seven are senior teams.

Among the visiting schools are St. Francis Xavier of Edmonton and Mercer Island, who were Washington state champions in 2007, as well as teams from the Lower Mainland.

The program is headed by former Victoria Shamrocks captain Darren Reisig.

“There’s not really a structured field lacrosse league at the school level, so this is a chance to play some games,” said Reisig.

“We head to Vancouver’s Charles Best in March for their tournament, outside of that not a lot going on as far as games.”

While Reisig would like to gain local lacrosse players as much exposure from NCAA schools as possible, Claremont’s not sitting back and waiting for lacrosse schools to come to them.

Last week the academy headed to a high school varsity tournament in Annapolis, Md., just outside of Baltimore. “Going to Baltimore as a lacrosse player is an eye opener for a Canadian,” said Reisig, calling it the capital of lacrosse in the States.

“Just like when you drive around here and see soccer nets on every field, when you drive around there you see lacrosse nets on every field.”

The group was greeted by 2008 Claremont grad Brock Armour who took them on a tour of his school’s stadium at Towson University, an NCAA division one lacrosse team.

“(Towson) was a real good experience for (the players) to see that type of opportunity,”said Reisig. In fact, the Baltimore area alone has six colleges within a half hour radius of each other that all play NCAA division one.

Last year the Annapolis tour was extremely successful as nine of the 13 graduates were recruited to the NCAA, including four to Bellarmine University in Kentucky.

Claremont played in seven games going 5-1-1, scoring some big wins. More importantly, however, says Reisig, the success proved the program can compete with the best varsity schools in that area.

sports@vicnews.com

Spartans in the NCAA

Three Claremont seniors, midfielder Kyle Dexter, attacker Jake Emms and defender Seth Lucas are all currently being recruited by NCAA schools.

Attackers Liam Kelly and Jordan Wong and midfielders Karsen Leung and Mitch McLaren are all freshman with Bellarmine.