Cal Poly Lacrosse teams up with Lax In LA

Bringing Lacrosse to the Inner-City

Lax in LA was founded in 2003 by Sean McKeon, when he formed the boys lacrosse club at Manual Arts High School, where McKeon teaches New Media arts. From that original squad, Lax in LA has expanded into over a dozen different inner-city schools, with both boys and girls lacrosse programs now running at the middle school and high school levels throughout South Central, Watts and East Los Angeles.

Lax in LA was created to give kids a constructive outlet in an area blighted by poverty, high dropout rates, and few athletic opportunities. Lacrosse serves as a unique method for reaching Lax in LA’s participants, but the program’s goals reach far beyond the playing field. Lax in LA fosters cooperation and teamwork in a way that many participants have not experienced. The program also provides them with beneficial after-school activities, requiring study hall participation, community service involvement, and academic accountability.

Most importantly, Lax in LA provides kids with an alternative vision of their future, one that includes graduating from high school, the possibility of college, and a glimpse of the world outside of the troubled neighborhoods that they live.

Lax in LA is dedicated to enriching the lives of the children it serves, and strives to empower its participants to transform their lives, improve their community, and break out of the cycle of poverty that pervades the inner-city.

The Cal Poly Connection

In 2005, Marc Lea, the head coach of Cal Poly Men’s Lacrosse, learned of an innovative lacrosse program underway at Manual Arts High School in inner-city Los Angeles. In an unusual coincidence, Coach Lea’s grandfather, Bill Gray, was a Manual Arts alumnus, as well as Lea’s greatest coaching influence. Although Gray’s game was baseball and not lacrosse, his passion and joy for teaching the game was unrivaled, and the countless hours spent imparting his knowledge and wisdom to his grandson provided a blueprint for Lea’s own future development as a coach.

Bill Gray passed away in 2005, but his coaching legacy will stretch long into the future. For several decades, Gray hosted one of the nation’s only free youth baseball schools at his own backyard diamond in southern California. Over the years, thousands of boys and girls attended his winter training sessions, and came away with both better baseball fundamentals and a true appreciation for the game.

For Coach Lea, the symbolism was too strong to ignore, and he pledged to stay involved with Manual Arts Lacrosse and the Lax In LA organization that McKeon was busy expanding. In 2006, Cal Poly Lacrosse was able to hold a lacrosse clinic on the Manual Arts campus. In 2007, the Cal Poly Lacrosse Alumni Association raised enough funds to purchase equipment for the new boys and girls lacrosse teams at Huntington Park HS, programs spearheaded by the Lax in LA program.

In 2009, Lea and McKeon organized the inaugural session of the Central Coast Lacrosse Camp. The week-long, non-profit summer camp was hosted on the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo, and organized and instructed by Coach Lea, Coach McKeon, and additional members of the Cal Poly Lacrosse coaching staff.