Collin County high school sports fans are familiar with the big three of football, basketball and baseball. But one of the quickest-growing areas of high school competition is played at the club level. Sports such as bowling, ice hockey, lacrosse and rugby continue to grow in popularity and participation even though they are not sanctioned by the University Interscholastic League. Collin County club teams are not only gaining public awareness, but taking their play to the highest level. So far this year, the Allen bowling team has won a state title after topping tough teams from Plano, Plano East and Plano West. The Plano Wildcats hockey team finished second in the state tournament, one year after Allen won the Texas Cup, and Frisco won the AT&T Metroplex High School Hockey League’s Silver Division Those other masked men wielding sticks, Plano lacrosse, continually holds its own against such area private school powers as Episcopal School of Dallas and St. Mark’s. Frisco defenseman Brendan Colbert, who had 20 points last season for the Raccoons, was named to the All-Silver Division team. And there are currently two products of the Plano lacrosse team, Nick Palesky and Mike Vaccaro, playing for NCAA Division I schools. They are example of the many Collin County club sports players who play for the love of the game without the usual glory of football’s Friday night lights. Allen’s “Other” Full-Contact Sport Area sports fans are well aware of the success that Allen football has experienced. But the school has another full-contact sport with their rugby team at the club level. Head coach George Allen coached 34 kids in 2007, enough to field a varsity squad and almost enough for a junior varsity. The Eagles play in the North Region against teams that have the sport at a varsity level who practice four times a week. Allen, on the other hand, practices just twice weekly. “We enjoy the game win, lose or draw and have a good time doing it,” he said. “The kids that get into it, they stay in it once they start playing. We have football players, band members, choir members and orchestra members playing.” Only in its fifth year as a club, Allen rugby continues to grow. “We had trouble getting 15 on the field during that first year but had 20-25 at training sessions this year,” Allen said. “So, we’ve done pretty well.” Being a club sport means that officially, Allen rugby isn’t affiliated with or sanctioned by Allen ISD, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get support from them. “We play our home games at the Allen High School track stadium,” he said. “That provides good exposure for Allen because that is one of the better facilities in North Texas and it showcases the kids pretty well. We just completed the Texas Youth Rugby State Quarterfinals there and the team that came up to play us from Strake Jesuit in Houston was quite impressed with our facility.” Allen realizes how fortunate he and his players are to receive such support. “If we didn’t have the support from the school, we would probably be playing our games on our practice field, a small piece of ground right next to the high school,” he said. “That’s where we played during our first three years. I finally got tired of it because a lot of kids were getting hurt out there.” He envisions rugby as a fully-sanctioned UIL sport in the future but realizes that the timetable could be a long one. “In the future, I expect UIL will embrace it but we’re in the soccer process right now,” Allen said. “If you wanted to compare it to a sport that has become a UIL sport, I would compare it to that. It took soccer a long time to get there.” One thing that Allen can do to possibly shorten that process is to help grow the sport at lower levels, something he and his players are doing through clinics. “Right now, we’re pushing into ASA (Allen Sports Authority) that runs all the junior stuff,” he said. “This summer, we will run a program for U-10, U-12 and U-14 playing tag rugby, which gets you into the basics of the game (running, passing and grabbing the flag). We’ve had a lot of interest after running a mini clinic at one of the ASA track meets and the kids loved it. So, we’re going to go for that. Once we get there, we will start generating interest and that will feed up through the school system. At that time, I see it taking off.” One great thing about rugby, at least compared to other sports is that there isn’t a ton of equipment. Allen’s players pay $250 per season which covers club dues, dues to the USA Rugby Football Union and allows the team to travel to three tournaments annually. As far as equipment, players get shorts, club socks, a club kit back and a polo shirt. Raccoons on Ice Once a tiny town, Frisco has become home to a number of big-time sports. While the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League are the biggest of the area teams to call this burgeoning suburb home, there is also some pretty decent hockey also being played at the high school level. The Frisco High School team had a great run through the Silver Division of the AT&T League, finishing second with 47 points. Actually, the Raccoons, who went 23-3-1, finished the year tied with Colleyville Heritage but fell in a tiebreaker game for the league title. Chris Murray led the Raccoons in scoring with 35 points while Austin Wells chipped in 28 and David Gebert had 26. Senior defender Brendan Colbert, who had 20 points, earned all-Silver Division team honors after being a key part of a defense that posted six shutouts. The Raccoons allowed just 44 goals all year, the second-fewest in the league, and also scored 122 times, third-most on the circuit. While Dave Doucette, the head varsity coach, admits that having hockey as a UIL sport would be a good thing, it also brings with it some inherent challenges. “A major challenge with it is just the support from the kids and the school,” he said. “Not being a UIL sport is not good in that aspect. But on the other hand, I can coach as can the other coaches throughout the league who are top-quality coaches. Not being a UIL sport, they’re allowed to bring in non-teachers to coach but if we were a UIL sport, I would have to teach if I wanted to keep coaching them.” But Doucette does feel that ice hockey is about at the point where it’s ready to become a sport with the full backing of the UIL. “I think it’s ready to make that jump,” he said. “There are so many teams out there and so many schools. I don’t think there are many schools now that don’t have club hockey teams. The support and the money to back hockey would take a lot because it is an expensive sport but I don’t know if that’s a drawback to UIL putting it in there. I’ve never really talked to anyone about why it hasn’t become a UIL sport.” The Raccoons feel fortunate to calle the Frisco StarCenter their home ice. “When the facility was built in Frisco, there was an agreement that the city and community would have a certain amount of ice time allocated to them throughout the year,” Doucette said. “We’re fortunate to have two weekly practices throughout the year. We do have to practice early in the morning and that is one drawback. We get there at about 6:15 AM during the week and it’s at about 5:45 or 7:00 AM on Saturday.” Doucette is a 10-year veteran of coaching who is in his third year of coaching Frisco. This past season, they had enough players for teams at the varsity and junior varsity level but were one player short of the minimum to also field a developmental squad. Since he has been coaching, he has seen several players play club hockey in college but has yet to have a player get a college hockey scholarship. One big drawback to the sport is the high cost for registration and equipment. According to Doucette, that came to $650 per player for this past season. That covered rental of ice time for the practices and games. However, equipment and uniforms aren’t included and can cost an additional $500 to $1,000 for the gear with uniforms starting at about $100. Growing in Stature Besides hockey, no sport at the club level has experienced the growth of lacrosse. It started as a club sport at Plano High School in 1991 and has clearly grown by leaps and bounds since then. Two former members, Vaccaro, who is a sophomore midfielder at Hofstra, and Palesky, a freshman midfielder at Army, are only two examples of the talented players that the club is producing. Head coach Kevin MacGibbon said that about 48 players currently participate in the program either at the varsity or junior varsity level. “The sport is a club sport but we play a very competitive schedule,” he said. “We practice every day at the high school and have gotten to the point where we can earn PE credit for the kids who want to do that. We have two coaches on the varsity who both have full-time jobs someplace else but devote two hours a day to these guys.” MacGibbon likes how much the sport has grown and continues to grow in North Texas but admits that lacrosse is still years away from becoming a UIL sport. “There are about 65 high schools that are playing lacrosse at a club level, so we’re starting to get some critical mass,” he said. “But the thing that they would need to go UIL is coaches and things like that. We don’t have that lacrosse intelligence right now down here except for at the private schools. I grew up in New Hampshire and my high school there was the first to have it as a sport there. It was a club sport there and took about 20 years before they made it the equivalent of UIL up there.” Like Allen rugby, Plano lacrosse has a great relationship with the school district. MacGibbon credits his predecessor, Chris Braceland, who played at Cornell in the 1990s and before that, played football for former head coach Gerald Brence at Plano, for laying the groundwork for that relationship. “When he came back here (from Cornell), he started talking to Coach Brence and slowly, we were able to start doing things,” MacGibbon said. “We put on tailgates at three of the football games last year where we invited all the parents to come over. Coach Brence has been very supportive. I would talk to him twice a year and I’m doing the same thing with [new coach Jaydon McCullough]. We tell him what we’re doing, who we’re playing and what type of schedule we have. We want to integrate ourselves into the school as much as possible. We do fundraising, which the kids are involved in but we support the other sports as well.” Admittedly, lacrosse isn’t a cheap sport to play but MacGibbon and the other members of his organization help offset that by fundraising. “To put on a game, we have to rent the stadium, and that costs about $1,200. We have to pay for uniforms, referees and a bus if we take trips. This year, we will raise about $25,000 in fundraising. Not only do you have to worry about coaching and getting a team on the field, I also have to worry about whether or not we have enough money to do certain things.” Each player pays annual dues of about $550 to help offset costs. Each year, the club takes a trip around spring break to either play in a tournament or to watch some college games. The last two years, they have traveled to Florida to play but in the past, have gone to Duke and North Carolina to see two of the nation’s premier collegiate programs compete. As the level of competition among Collin County’s club sports teams continues to rise, it may not be long before rugby, hockey and lacrosse aficionados from across the country make North Texas the destination of choice for sports other than football.