As the interest in the sport continues to grow, Owensboro’s girls lacrosse team will be hosting the Kentuckiana Clash on Saturday.
The lacrosse invitational will be the first of its kind in the Owensboro community and it will include eight teams from across Kentucky and Indiana.
When Head Coach Carl Fehrenbacher created the girls lacrosse program for Owensboro High School, he quickly realized that there was a need for teams in surrounding areas to find games.
“When I started the team five years ago and as I started playing Evansville area teams I realized that many of them had difficulty getting fields to play home games,” Fehrenbacher said. “I started playing some teams in Bowling Green two or three years ago and realized they also had the same problem. I also discovered I was about an hour between each of those destinations and thought it would make a perfect spot to get those two sets of teams together and play.”
So Fehrenbacher reached out to local lacrosse programs and made sure they could get some games set up. However, it wasn’t super easy to throw together.
“A military phrase ‘herding cats’ comes to mind when I think about getting all the team schedules coordinated to match for one specific day,” Fehrenbacher said. “Remember these teams aren’t in the same leagues so they have no league requirement to actually play each other.”
Games will start at 9 a.m. on Saturday and will run to 5:45 p.m. Concessions will be available for those in attendance and t-shirts for the invitational will be sold for 20$ each at the gate.
The Lady Devils will play at 11:30 a.m. and the last game of the day at 5:45 p.m. Fehrenbachaer is thrilled to see the tournament coming together and wanted to give a big thanks to Athletic Director Todd Harper for the support.
“[He] was instrumental in not only helping bring this team to life but also supporting this invitational which has also turned out to be a very big fundraiser for OHS girls lacrosse,” Fehrenbacher said. “Even though girls lacrosse is technically not a KHSAA sanctioned sport, he has treated the girls just like any other student athlete at OHS and has been there to support us every step of the way.”
All in all Fehrenbacher thinks that getting all of these lacrosse programs together in one place is huge for the community and the sport overall.
“I’m excited to see teams that ordinarily never would’ve played each other enjoying the thrill of competition and the camaraderie of playing a sport that they all love,” Fehrenbacher said.
