The Traditional Movement

I have a good buddy that started an instagram page called the Traditional Movement. He is a notorious as a traditional user, meaning he doesn't play with a stick that has mesh in it. He strings his own sticks the traditional way the Haudenosaunee did with their wooden sticks with leathers and string to weave in a way to create the pocket using materials from the earth. Its a time honored tradition in our sport to know how and be able to string a leather pocket. Now I am a traditional enthusiast myself, I love stringing them, never played a meaningful lacrosse game with anything else and my mom strung my very first lacrosse stick in this way. But I'll admit as I got older and time became less expendable, I would get sticks for free strung with mesh and I could use them right out of the mail to serve my needs, so I did. This isn't a valid excuse to use mesh, its just reality, but I digress, my guy started his page and began stringing up leather pockets for his sons and their friends on local travel teams. He posted some of the beautiful work(see image above) to his page along with some choice music and it really started to pick up steam. Fast forward to today and he has people from all over the country sending him sticks to string up and post on the page before he ships them out. He started the movement on day one when he named his page, but the movement really didn't take off until there were enough people to appreciate it. I think back to one of my favorite TED talks that talks about starting a movement...the quote I always remember is "it takes Guts to stand out. Remember the first follower is what allows the lone nut to transform into a leader. A few more and we have momentum, then we have a movement."

I wanted to highlight what The traditional movement has done because a) he's a legend of a friend I want to drive some traffic towards his page and b) it's where we need lacrosse to go with regards to the sideline behavior. It's going to take a few nuts to see what we are offering with a certification for lacrosse parents to help clean up the sidelines and drive their teams parents to participate. It's no secret we have a huge problem, ask any person who attends a youth game and the top negative experience is the parents. And look aren't trying to solve it for all youth sports, just lacrosse. Lacrosse players, coaches and parents are just better and we can make the change in our sport that the rest of the sports world wants to see in theirs. With the momentum we are seeing we could very quickly have a movement of our own.