Claremont Secondary teacher and lacrosse coach Darren Reisig isn’t shy to admit it.
“We took the name [Friday Night Lights] from American high school football, 100 per cent,” he said.
If that night and lights worked for the spherical pigskin ball — popularized by the Buzz Bissinger novel and movie and TV series it spawned — why not the round vulcanized-rubber ball?
The 12th annual Friday Night Lights Spartan Shootout high school lacrosse tournament begins in the Friday morning light at 8:45 a.m. at the University of Victoria turf fields and features the always-popular rivalry game under those Friday night floodlights at 7 p.m. between the Claremont Spartans and Mercer Island Islanders, the 2023 Washington state 3A champions. The feature girls’ game will be between Claremont and Royal Bay on Friday at 5:15 p.m. It all adds up to a big Friday night.
“Everyone at our school gets behind this and we’ve had 1,000 people out to cheer on the players in past years,” said Reisig.
“It’s been good for our school community and good for the lacrosse community.”
It is also indicative of the growth of lacrosse, which returns to the Olympic Games in 2028 at Los Angeles.
“The pro game and now the Olympics continue to give our sport more exposure and it continues to grow,” said Reisig.
“We’ll see where things go and how big the future can be for the game. There are a lot of developing nations trying out the sport.”
Reisig has been expert in both versions of it and was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2023 for his box-lacrosse exploits as a Mann Cup-champion two-way player in the Western Lacrosse Association with the Victoria Shamrocks and in the professional National Lacrosse League and for Canada in international field-lacrosse.
Reisig’s Claremont lacrosse academy has sent more than 125 players on to U.S. collegiate NCAA field lacrosse since 2008. Two other Island high school lacrosse programs have since also come on stream — Royal Bay Ravens and Nanaimo District Secondary Islanders — and are producing NCAA players.
All three of those programs will be represented Friday at UVic along with the Centennial Centaurs of Coquitlam, St. Thomas More Knights of Burnaby, Misson Roadrunners, Delta Pacers, three schools from Alberta and Mercer Island.
Seventeen teams in total, both junior and senior high school and boys and girls, will play a total of 46 games from daylight to under those Friday night lights and then again all day Saturday.
