Young lacrosse club gathers steam on Flathead Reservation
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Tim Fitzpatrick fires a shot at the net over two Hellgate players last week in Pablo. Ten Sticks won the game 13-12.
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Melea Burke
Ten Sticks players are all smiles as they meet with the Knights after the game.
Melea Burke
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When JR Daniels moved to the Mission Valley from Minnesota five years ago, he had no idea he would become the coach of the Flathead Reservation’s first lacrosse team.
Last week, he watched as the fledgling Ten Sticks club did something no one else in Montana had done in two years: beat Hellgate, the No. 1 team in the state.
“They’re such a dominant team,” Daniels said of the Knights. “That was really huge; it gives our team a lot of confidence … (Ten Sticks players) practice harder than anybody in the league; they practice longer and they travel farther.”
That dedication has earned Ten Sticks recognition from competitors, lacrosse enthusiasts and media. After beating Hellgate May 1 in Pablo — the last home game of the season for Ten Sticks — the athletes traveled to Whitefish on Sunday, where they dominated the Flathead club 13-6. The buzz there was that Ten Sticks is viewed as a top competitor heading into the state tournament, which is “just really neat to hear,” Daniels said.
“We’re hitting our stride right now,” he added. “We’re really performing.”
As any Ten Sticks player will tell you, winning state is the next step for the team. But it’s not why they play lacrosse.
Deep roots
“The one thing about lacrosse that’s different from any other team sport out there is that it’s deeply rooted in tradition and Native American origin,” explains Ten Sticks founder Alex Alviar in an informational video created for the team’s online fundraising campaign, “Ten Days for Ten Sticks.”
Respect and honor are valued above scoring goals and winning games, and the club’s success shows it’s a philosophy that works. Whenever possible before a game, players “circle up” for a flag song and prayer that goes something like this: “Creator, thank you for this game. Thank you for the lives that let us play it. Help us today to honor your game. May our playing of it make us stronger and better men of character. Thank you for our teammates and our opponents. May we together bring out the best in one another as competitors and as friends.
“Creator, keep us safe and heal our injuries. May our game be pleasing and honorable to you.”
In Native American tradition, lacrosse is known as the Creator’s Game, a belief that Ten Sticks players hold close to their hearts. The club’s 20-odd players, all high school boys save one eighth-grader, live up to 50 miles apart and attend schools from Polson to Arlee. They are native and non-native, but on the lacrosse field, differences like ethnicity and cultural background are stripped away, leaving only the joy, pain, strife and fulfillment of the game.
“Ten Sticks is pulling kids from all over the reservation from different schools and communities, and it’s also pulling kids who would normally not hang out together,” Alviar explained. “You’ve got native kids, non-native kids, well-to-do kids and kids who are literally homeless, and they all come together to play lacrosse.
“It takes 10 sticks — 10 kids — to make a team; each stick is different and they have different strengths and weaknesses. And you need them all for a team.”
Few sports alive today have the history or deeper meanings inherent in lacrosse, and according to Alviar, Ten Sticks’ non-native members regard the game’s origins just as highly as do their Indian teammates.
“As a team, it doesn’t matter and we come together when we do things that honor the native origins of the game,” he said. “Everybody sees this equally as an expression of this is who we are; we are Ten Sticks Lacrosse.”
Planting seeds
Alviar himself, of Filipino descent, is one of those non-native lacrosse players who appreciates the sport’s roots. A liberal arts instructor at Salish Kootenai College since 2007, Alviar played lacrosse from sixth grade through high school in Michigan, garnering an all-American goaltender title and two-time all-state goalie recognition before he graduated in 1994. He picked up his stick again in 2010, joined the Missoula Men’s League as goaltender for 406Lax and still plays “when I can be there,” he laughed.
While Daniels and assistant coaches Albert Plant Jr. and Luke Mills have taken over leading the team, Alviar works behind the scenes to improve the program in various ways. He created NextNation, a program to get younger kids into lacrosse, and nine third and fourth-graders have been practicing with Alviar twice a week since the beginning of March. They’re wrapping up for the season, and the program’s continuation will be based on interest and level of commitment from kids and their parents. Eventually, Alviar hopes NextNation will serve as a feeder program for Ten Sticks. He also plans to enlist Naomi Plant to build a girls’ program.
“This is the first seed to get it going,” he said. “We just need to establish a toehold first. We hope to have a really robust youth program and a robust girls’ program.”
The club started with just 10 players — just enough to field a team, and Alviar named the program accordingly. Three years later, the roster has nearly doubled, with 21 youth signing up at the season’s start. Injuries and other obligations have siphoned off a few players, bringing the current number to 17, Alviar said.
Ten Sticks’ future is bright, but building a program from the ground up hasn’t been easy. The club recently received its 501c3 nonprofit status, and a major way people can help the young men of Ten Sticks realize their dream of winning state is to donate to “Ten Days for Ten Sticks,” a funding campaign running through Friday, May 10, on Indiegogo.com. The goal is to raise $10,000 in 10 days to send Ten Sticks to the state competition May 18-19 in Bozeman and to send four players, a coach and a cameraman to visit the “motherland of lacrosse,” the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in New York, to compete with and learn from experts in the birthplace of lacrosse. Halfway through the campaign, donations had climbed to just over $4,200. A large chunk of the $10,000 will pay cameraman Thomas Kurdy of Content Monkeys, a Missoula-based social media company, to begin filming a documentary on the original 10 Ten Sticks players.
“Without those first 10, we just wouldn’t be here at all,” Alviar said.
Links to “Ten Days for Ten Sticks” and a video detailing the documentary project are available at tenstickslacrosse.org.
Growing strong
“I didn’t know what lacrosse was,” remembered co-captain Jarrod Plant.
But three years ago when Polson High School senior Dan LaFranier invited Plant to check out what he and some other kids were doing on the lacrosse field, Plant took a chance that he says has changed his life. With little idea what he was getting into, Plant picked up a stick and tossed around a ball with some other guys.
“It was pretty amazing,” he said.
Plant became one of the first 10 boys to join the team — part of its namesake. The hardest part, he said, is “adjusting to throwing like I would in baseball to throwing with a lacrosse stick. It sounds easier than it is.”
Plant said the special part about playing for Ten Sticks is that students from different schools and walks of life who wouldn’t normally meet are drawn to the team.
“Lacrosse has brought everyone together,” he said.
Arlee senior and defensive captain Mike Brown agreed. He’s gone from not knowing anyone except his brother, team captain Al Plant, to viewing his teammates as brothers.
Lacrosse requires physical and mental stamina, a high level of communication, and lots of hard work — all of which Ten Sticks can claim, coach Daniels said.
“It’s a tough game. You have to have a lot of mental maturity to play it, and this team really has it,” he said.
Not only have his players become some of the best in the state, they have become some of the best-liked. Ten Sticks athletes treat the competition with respect and kindness — after all, this is the Creator’s Game.
“I can’t say enough about the kids … even the refs are just amazed (at their sportsmanship),” Daniels said. “I’m just really truly blessed with a great group of kids.”
According to Plant, the admiration is mutual — the team’s good reputation starts with the coaches, he said. Leadership from Daniels, Mills and Plant Jr. “helps us maintain our discipline,” he said.
“I’ve got a good coaching staff behind me,” Daniels noted. “(Mills and Plant Jr.) do so much for this organization.”
Ten Sticks added one more home game to the schedule over the weekend, and will face off against Flathead’s JV team Wednesday, May 8, at 5 p.m. in Pablo. If you haven’t watched Ten Sticks this year, be sure to check out the action and get a taste of what’s kept this sport alive for hundreds of years.
“I enjoy being able to forget life’s problems just for a little bit,” he said. “Lacrosse is called the medicine game for a reason; it’s a cure-all.”
