Metro League Tennis

A recent assignment for the Beaverton Valley Times took me to the Tualatin Hills Recreation Center to shoot a match between Aloha and Southridge High Schools. The Southridge ladies edged out Aloha after the total games won and lost needed to be calculated between the teams after the match and set scores were tied. When it was all added up, Southridge 79 games won against Aloha's 68 turned out to be the deciding factor.

LAX Explosion

If you are looking for a story about a big kaboom at the Los Angeles International Airport, this isn't it. The LAX Explosion is the sport of lacrosse, commonly abbreviated as "LAX," that has burst on the youth and high school scene in Oregon. The sport has experienced tremendous growth in the last couple of years. With a combination of skill, speed and hard hitting, lacrosse is the perfect morsel for the palate of the youth of America seeking a new taste for an old sport. Introduced by early Native American Indians, lacrosse plays similar to hockey, sans the skates and the players get to keep their teeth.

The Oregon Youth Lacrosse League is the organizing body for all that is lacrosse in Oregon. The league consists of 33 high school boys teams and 24 girls teams, along with a healthy crop of youth teams between the ages of 11 and 15. How much fun is the sport? Just ask the Hillsboro JV Team, which in their first game of the school's premier season for the sport, tied their game against an experienced team from Century High School with a desperation shot from over 35 yards out from goal in the final 10 seconds. As if the nature of the game for the kids were not enough, a start like that sealed the deal...they were hooked.