Sept. 11, 2006

The flyers posted around town urging anyone who wanted to throw a lacrosse ball around went unheeded, and Peter Anderson was getting antsy. Three years he lobbied, and nothing. It was 1992, and his patience had worn thin. The sport he loved playing in college and at law school seemingly didn't exist in this state.

Doesn't anyone play lacrosse in Idaho? Do people in Boise even know what it is?

With his frustration mounting, Anderson made a simple decision, the effects of which are still being felt in Idaho today. Instead of waiting for someone to read a sign and come to him, Anderson was going to bring lacrosse to everyone else.

Tooling around in his backyard, Anderson crafted a makeshift lacrosse goal out of galvanized pipe and some netting, loaded it up, and brought it to several of the local junior high schools to demonstrate lacrosse. Many of the kids took a liking to this new game that blended together many of the sports they enjoyed, so Anderson left the goal with them.

Nearly 15 years later, that lone home-crafted goal made of hardware-store pipe has been replaced by dozens of freshly painted, regulation goals dotting the Treasure Valley -- the alternate moniker of the Greater Boise area -- as youth, high school and college programs have evolved since Anderson's introduction of the sport.

"It was kind of like kicking a rock down a hill," said Anderson. "The sport kind of sells itself. Actually, that might be a case of false modesty because it was a huge amount of work those first couple of years."

His junior high school foray was just the start of his quest to bring lacrosse to Southern Idaho. And find some playmates.

Three years later, in 1995, he started a club lacrosse program at Boise State University (famed for the blue turf on its football field). The formative years of the program were bolstered by the participation of Anderson and other ex-players who made their way out of the Boise woodwork to lay the foundation for a strong program.

Anderson, a former deputy district attorney for the Idaho Attorney General's office, also established the Idaho Lacrosse Association as a non-profit Idaho corporation in 1996. That same year he applied for, and received, chapter status from the Lacrosse Foundation, one of the eight organizations that merged to form US Lacrosse in 1998. Naturally, Anderson was installed as the president of the chapter and retained that title for the first five years after the organization's inception.

Working with the local director of the YMCA and a local energetic lacrosse family, Anderson established a youth league in 1997. It started small, with just 10 junior high school players on the field being coached by Boise State club team members. The following spring, Anderson and others managed to field a pair of junior high teams that played each other every week.

With some of the youngsters moving onto high school the next year, along with the word-of-mouth popularity of the sport, two high school programs were established in 1999. Anderson spent a year coaching at both Bishop Kelly High School and Timberline High School during those formative years, as well as continuing his work at the junior high level.

Each passing year seemingly brought another program online in the Treasure Valley, and the youth program numbers, bolstered by the YMCA, have steadily grown in the area. Sometimes Anderson looks out the window while driving through Boise and has to smile.

"It's exciting to see a kid walking down the street carrying a lacrosse stick," he said. "I just kind of get a chuckle out of that. It's amazing how quickly things have gone."

Lacrosse still has plenty of growth potential left in Southern Idaho (which is still a separate entity from its northern counterpart), as there are plenty of other cities and high schools to be colonized. Sun Valley, a ski resort town in South-Central Idaho several hours from Boise, is toying with the idea of starting a high school program, according to Anderson.

Official state sanctioning of the sport is likely years off, according to current chapter president Tad Arnt, who helped Anderson form the Idaho Lacrosse Association. The geographical chasm between the northern and southern parts of the state is a major reason, but there are also more pressing needs at this point besides sanctioning. Arnt and the chapter are focusing their efforts on the recruitment and training of coaches and officials, both of which are in short supply in the Treasure Valley.

However, it has been barely a decade since the state was introduced, so all things considered, the sport is in pretty good shape. "We've gone from 1997 with 10 kids playing out on a field at Boise High School and now 10 years later we have over 10 teams and 1,000 players," said Anderson. "Soon kids all over the Valley will be playing."

Centennial High School of Boise played the best lacrosse last spring, as the Patriots won the Southern Championship (the de facto state championship), capping off their perfect 14-0 season with a dramatic, 9-8 victory over Timberline in the finals. Centennial middie Krieg Shaw scored the game-winner with 20 seconds left in overtime.

Having an exciting championship game wasn't on Peter Anderson's mind when he built the primitive goal in hopes of training someone he could throw the ball around with, but he'll take it, although he isn't as involved as he once was. Anderson is still a lacrosse official in the Boise area, but he enjoys spending most of his time now with his 6-year-old son.

Anderson's boy enjoys lacrosse and may have a future in the sport. For now, Anderson is quite content to just go out in the backyard and toss the ball back and forth for an hour or so, rekindling his love of the sport.

It's what he wanted all along.