SPARKS, Md. — For the first time in their history, the U.S. men’s national lacrosse teams will compete in Texas. The U.S. senior and U19 teams will play four games as part of the Spring Premiere at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) in San Antonio on the weekend of Jan. 4-5, 2020.
On Saturday Jan. 4, the U.S. U19 team will play an exhibition against the Edge Lacrosse Club, one of the top programs from Canada at 1 p.m. That will be followed by the U.S. senior team playing the Japanese national team at 3:30 p.m and a game between Japan and Edge at 6 p.m.
On Sunday Jan. 5, the U.S. U19 team will play Japan at 9 a.m., followed by a Blue-White intra-squad exhibition for the U.S. senior team at 11 a.m.
Tickets are just $10 daily and $15 for the entire weekend. All games will be played at the 6,000-seat Gayle and Tom Benson Stadium on UIW’s campus.
“We’re delighted to bring our men’s national teams to San Antonio for this event,” said Skip Lichtfuss, director, national teams and high performance for US Lacrosse. “With Texas being among the states with the highest growth rate for the sport over the past 10 years, it’s a terrific opportunity to showcase our sport’s best to fuel further expansion of lacrosse in the Southwest and maximize the impact of our national teams.”
In addition to the game, the U.S. senior team will hold a player clinic on Saturday, Jan. 4 from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. The clinic is open to players aged 8 to 16 and will be led by current training team members. Athletes will work through a station-based format, including position-specific instruction, and action in small-sided and full-field games. The $80 registration fee includes a t-shirt, team poster and admission to the weekend games.
The U.S. senior team is the reigning world champion, having beaten rival Canada 9-8 on Tom Schreiber’s last-second goal in Netanya, Israel in the summer of 2018. Since the first world championship in 1967, the U.S. has won the gold medal 10 times and finished as the silver medalist three times. Japan was the sixth-place finisher at the 2018 world championship.
The U.S. senior team is led by John Danowski, also the head coach at Duke. The winningest men’s lacrosse coach in NCAA Division I history, Danowski will be the coach for the U.S. team at the next World Lacrosse championship in 2022.
The U.S. U19 team is training for the 2020 World Lacrosse Men’s U19 World Championship, which will be held in Limerick, Ireland this coming July. The 26-player training roster features players coming from high school in 11 states and they represent 14 different colleges.
Nick Myers, the head coach at Ohio State, is in his second stint leading the U.S. U19 program. At the most recent U19 world championship in 2016, Myers’ squad trailed Canada by six goals at the half and by three goals with less than nine minutes to play before staging a dramatic rally to win 13-12 on a game-winning goal by Ryan Conrad with just eight seconds remaining.
The victory marked the eighth straight world championship for the U.S. team program since the inaugural U19 world championship was held in 1988.
The U.S. men’s national team trains and plays using best-in-class products provided by Nike (apparel and footwear), Cascade (helmets), Warrior (equipment), SISU Guard (mouthguards), The Pearl by Guardian (balls) and DJO (sports braces).
In addition to these partners, Greenfields, Hudl, MedStar Sports Medicine and Sports Performance Tracking are officials sponsors of Team USA. Team training is also aided by products from Motive Pure, NormaTec Recovery and Athletic Republic.