July 1, 2008

Note: This article appeared in the June issue of Lacrosse Magazine, a US Lacrosse publication available exclusively to its members. Join now to start your monthly subscription!

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by Clare Lochary, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff

As a kindergartener, Nathan Logsdon asked his teacher for a drink of water, but no one had any idea what he was saying. That's when his parents decided they needed to stop speaking Finnish around the house.

Nonetheless, Logsdon has still earned the nickname Mr. Finland from his classmates at Caddo Magnet High School in Shreveport, La. The son of a Finnish mother and an American father, Logsdon is a fervent booster of the Scandanavian country best known for ice hockey, Nokia cell phones and a top-flight educational system.

"I'm really big about being from Finland. I've been there three times. The last time was in seventh grade. I go to Finnish camp every summer for a month," said Logsdon.

It was at language camp during summer 2006 when his Finnish background collided with his distinctly American hobby -- lacrosse. Between classes at Concordia Language Village in Bemidji, Minn., Logsdon was looking up ILF World Championship results on the Web when he discovered that Finland had a team. He was so excited that he did his final project for the camp on the Finnish national lacrosse team.

(Most of the other Finnish-American kids at the camp were the descendants of the early 20th century wave of Scandinavian immigrants to the upper Midwest, and were totally unfamiliar with the sport. Lacrosse evangelism often happens in the unlikeliest ways.)

This summer, Logsdon won't be just a fan of Finnish lacrosse -- he's a player. The junior goalie will compete for his mother's country at the ILF Under-19 World Championships in Coquitlam beginning Thursday. After sending game film to Finnish U-19 coach Risto Worthington, an assistant coach at Glenelg Country (Md.) School, and a few in-person tryouts, Logsdon was added to the Finns' 23-man roster. He is one of four American-born players who will don the blue and white.

"This is like a dream come true. This is the coolest thing ever," said Logsdon, who holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and in Finland.

Logsdon was born in Colorado and took up lacrosse in the sixth grade. He liked how the game combined his favorite sports, an affinity that echoes his melting-pot background.

"I always liked hockey, but it was always too expensive to play. And I liked basketball and football too, and all that was put together into lacrosse," said Logsdon. "I just think it's really cool. And you just look cool whenever you wear all your gear."

When his parents announced that the family was moving to Louisiana three years ago, he was incensed, partially because no right-thinking teenager wants to be uprooted from his friends and school, and partially because he figured there was no lacrosse in Shreveport.

On the second point, he was happily wrong. While most of the lacrosse teams in Louisiana are clustered near New Orleans, there is a budding lacrosse community further north. Logsdon switched from long-stick defense to goalie when he started playing for Caddo, since the Mustangs needed a backup goalie. The switch proved fortuitous; the Finns' U-19 team carries only one other goalie, Santtu Perkiömäki, who has played for less than a year.

Logsdon's mother had some initial doubts about lacrosse.

"I remember when I saw the first games, I was horrified. It was so violent," said Laina Logsdon, in her lilting Scandanavian accent. "But now I'm hooked. I cheer so much that at the end of the game I am more exhausted than he is. I love the game."

That Finland even has a lacrosse community is a story worth telling: Antii Salomaa was a semipro Finnish soccer play recuperating from a knee injury in 1999, when he saw the movie "American Pie" and was more intrigued by the lacrosse scenes than by the teen sex romp shenanigans. He ordered two sticks online, and by 2006 was a player on the first Finnish team to play in an ILF championship.

Most Finnish lacrosse clubs are based in Helsinki, although six U-19 players hail from Turku, a rival city to the west. (Located about 165 miles apart, Helsinki and Turku are the Finnish equivalents of New York and Boston. It would be unthinkable to concede dominance in any sport to the other, no matter how esoteric.)

While lacrosse is in its nascent stages in Finland, Worthington is encouraged by the ice hockey skills that his players bring to the game.

"The defenders, they are amazing at goosing that ball. They can just smack that ball and make it go right where they want it to," said Worthington, who has a Finnish mother and was an attackman for the University of Mary Washington (Va.) and the 2006 ILF Finnish team.

Thanks to all those years at language camp, Logsdon is fluent in Finnish, but expects that he'll communicate with his defense in English, since so many of his teammates are bilingual.