06/05/2019

Tricksters Lacrosse Team: You learn more from losses than from wins

Tricksters Lacrosse Team: Z prehier sa človek naučí viac ako z výhier
A car mechanic, an IT guy, a marketer and a lawyer run around the field with sticks and balls... No, this is not the beginning of a joke, but the reality of the first lacrosse team in Slovakia. Meet the Tricksters Lacrosse Team . Lacrosse is originally an old Native American game that also prepared young warriors and was attributed healing effects. For Native Americans, lacrosse is a philosophy of life. The first official rules of the game were introduced in 1850, and since then lacrosse has spread to other continents, including Europe and Australia, but especially to university towns on the east coast of the USA. The history of the oldest lacrosse club in Slovakia dates back to 2003, when it was founded by brothers Mark and Tomáš Lichtner. "Mark Lichtner traveled a lot around America, met Indians there, studied these Indian tribes a little. And he decided to bring lacrosse to Slovakia," explains the president of the Tricksters club, midfielder Martin Kramár, the marketer from the introduction to our article.

The club's beginnings were modest, but gradually the team grew and with increasing experience came the first competitions and successes. "When we were founded, there were 10 members in the club - friends, acquaintances, later a few players split off from the original club and a new club was founded, then another one in Prievidza. It was great that it started to develop. So that we could play with each other at that time, we started organizing the so-called Tricksters Cup, a lacrosse tournament," says Martin Kramár, and continues: "The first successes came in 2007, when we won the Danube Lacrosse Conference, the predecessor of the Danube Lacrosse League. Then we won the first international tournament in 2008. The years 2009 - 2012 were very successful for the Tricksters, now there is a slight decline, the players have aged and left, so there is a renewal of the generation and we are looking for new players to get to higher positions again."

We want to move forward.

A major breakthrough in lacrosse in Slovakia was the establishment of the Slovak Lacrosse League in 2010, which was founded by two other clubs together with the Tricksters. In the following years, the number of clubs increased, and there are currently 6 in Slovakia. The Tricksters Lacrosse Team won every year from the league's inception until its departure from it in 2017. "Winning is great, but it didn't move us forward. It's paradoxical, but you learn more from losses than from wins. Since we left the Slovak Lacrosse League, we have been playing the aforementioned Danube Lacrosse League - the league of countries around the Danube. In addition to us, teams from Vienna, Graz, Ljubljana and Budapest play in it. We also try to play the Czech league - from August to November. It's always better to play with the better teams, because it then moves us forward. We want to keep learning and improving," says Kramár.
As is clear from the introduction, every player on the team has a "civilian" job and lacrosse is "just" a hobby. "It's an amateur sport for us and we don't make a living from it. We have two training sessions a week and the number of games depends on the league, the Danube Lacrosse League is played once or twice a month, the Czech League is played two or three times a month. Plus, we participate in international tournaments. For example, we regularly go to the January tournament in Budapest. This year we finished third there, last year we won the tournament," describes Kramár.

The biggest motivation for lacrosse players, like in other sports, is to get to the World Championship. The Tricksters team first managed to do so in 2010, and two years before that they played in the European Championship for the first time. “It’s a great feeling to play with players we’ve seen in videos on the internet before. Last year we participated in the World Championship in Israel and it was great. Two weeks by the water, just lacrosse, friends and relaxation, almost like a vacation,” laughs Kramár. “We even managed to place there, our best ever – we finished 23rd out of 46 countries in the world.” The club is now starting preparations for the European Championship in Wroclaw, Poland, which will be held next year. In addition, they will participate in two international tournaments this year – in Barcelona, ​​Spain, and Sofia, Bulgaria.

We are looking for new talents

There used to be a women's lacrosse team in Bratislava, but there was no generational change. The girls went to universities in other cities and the team disbanded. The longest-playing player on the men's team is founding member Tomáš Lichtner. His brother Mark stopped playing after the World Championships in Denver in 2014. The youngest player is 16 years old and has been playing for two years. "We currently have 18 players on the roster, but we are still looking for new ones. We believe that one day we will be able to form a children's team and we will build a relationship with sports in children from an early age," says Martin Kramár.

What is lacrosse?

Lacrosse is a team game played on a surface the size of a football field. 10 players run around the field at a time - 3 forwards, 3 midfielders, 3 defenders and 1 goalkeeper. Its basic goal is to get the ball into the opponent's goal. Players use special sticks, so-called lacrosse sticks, which consist of a stick of different lengths (forwards have a 90 cm lacrosse stick, and midfielders and defenders use a 1.8 m long lacrosse stick) and a head, a kind of mesh made of leather or laces. Currently, there are 6 teams in Slovakia, two in Bratislava. Tricksters Lacrosse Team plays so-called field lacrosse on an open field. In addition, there is also box lacrosse, something like indoor lacrosse, whose rules differ from field lacrosse. Women's lacrosse also has different rules .
06/05/2019