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The players who will lead Wyoming Area into its boys lacrosse debut this week represent two distinct groups.
The first Warriors roster is split almost equally between young players with experience from the Valley Laxerz youth program and older athletes who have established themselves in other high school sports but are being exposed to lacrosse for the first time.
Shaun Rohland is preparing Wyoming Area for its opener Thursday at Crestwood, the team he coached the past two seasons.
Rohland, a Pittston resident, also coached as an assistant at Harrisburg for two years before arriving at Crestwood, where he was an assistant for a season then became a head coach for the first time in 2013.
“It’s almost the same as situation as Crestwood,” said Rohland, who guided the Comets to a 5-7 record in the Wyoming Valley Conference last season after going 1-11 in his first year. “When I came in as an assistant, it was only their second year.
“I didn’t start from the ground up like we are at Wyoming Area, but there are a lot of similarities between the two teams.”
The WVC as a whole is in just its third season, so Rohland said the Warriors have the potential to catch up before too long.
“In terms of catching up, the biggest thing is our youth program that feeds into the Wyoming Area School District,” Rohland said. “As long as the Valley Laxerz continues to flourish, in two or three years, we’ll be on par with some of the top teams in the conference.”
The current freshman class was the first to come through the Laxerz, and has supplied 10 players to the first-year high school program.
“We have another 10 who have filled in from the high school who wanted to come out for the team with little to no experience,” Rohland said.
The strongest of the freshman group appears to be Jake Urban and Sammy Greenfield on the attack, along with Conor McCormick and Justin Joseph on defense.
Seniors Jeff Skursky and Ken Burkhardt also seem ready to play key roles in the team’s defense.