Bishop Kelley Debuting New Sport

When starting a team, the beginning may not be the smoothest. When you're starting a team with a sport most of your players hadn't heard of, it's even more confusing.

Bishop Kelley coach Matt Dent says "stuff that elementary kids are doing on the east coast, we're doing on the high school level."

That East Coast sport—which has spread across the country and now in Green Country—is lacrosse. It shares similar characteristics to hockey, football, soccer and basketball, just with a stick. For Bishop Kelley, it's their third game ever and at the start players were, as senior player Scott Love says, "Pretty clueless. Man I had no idea what I was doing."

"We've actually had chalk talk sessions where we've shown kids video, white board stuff to actually show them the basics of the game," Dent said.

For Dent, seeing face-offs go well, watching someone at the X position work the offense and avoiding cross-checks is frustrating. "It's purely fundamental at this point."

But it can only get better for the Comets and for high school lacrosse in Tulsa. Bishop Kelley is now one of three teams in the area, along with one club team. The hope is more schools will start teams

"It's great," Holland Hall coach Collin Sharp said. "There have been a lot of guys coaching around here for years. It's great to see the kids love it."

For now, these three teams will see lots of travel time.

"Even with four teams in town there's still a lot of travel on weekends to go out of town to go to KC, Arkansas and Dallas," Dent said.

The Comets are playing experienced schools this year, so they'll face a learning curve, but hopefully the future's bright.