Super Bowl grant to help spread traditional "wooden stick" lacrosse in metro
A group that helps Native American youth around the Twin Cities play lacrosse received the largest grant in its history on Tuesday.
The $50,000 grant from the Minnesota Super Bowl Host Committee Legacy Fund will purchase a team bus and equipment for Twin Cities Native Lacrosse, including the club's first ever uniforms.
The all American Indian-led group teaches the traditional-style lacrosse that's been played by Ojibwe, Dakota and other tribes in the area for centuries, with wooden sticks and without the rules and expensive equipment of the modern game.
"In doing this traditional game it really breaks down the game into a way of teaching about much larger things than what happens on the field," said coach and director John Hunter, "about life, and how we deal with life and adversity."
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The organization works with about 70 Native American families around the metro area, said Hunter, about 100 kids overall, representing 40 different tribes.
The grant to Twin Cities Native Lacrosse is the eleventh from the Minnesota Super Bowl Host Committee, which is awarding 52 grants, one a week for an entire year, leading up to the 52nd Super Bowl to be played in Minneapolis at U.S. Bank Stadium next year.
The focus of the grants is to promote health and wellness for young people and families across Minnesota, specifically in underserved, low-income communities.
The grants try to encourage increased physical activity, improve access to healthy food and empower good coaches and mentors in the lives of young people.
"This is all part of a campaign that we really hope will buck the trend," explained Dana Nelson, vice president of legacy and partnerships with the committee. She said statistics showing that young people today are expected to have shorter life spans than their parents inspired the program's focus.
"We want young people to be active in whatever way appeals to them," she said. "We want to reach as many young people in as many ways as possible."
Grants to date have exceeded $600,000. The money is donated by foundations, corporations and private individuals, and the grants are vetted by the Minnesota Department of Health's Statewide Health Improvement Program.
Three quarters of donations are slated for greater Minnesota, including all eleven Indian reservations in the state.
Other awards will help build new playgrounds in Rochester, Fairbault and Moorhead, support community gardens on the Mille Lacs reservation, buy a fleet of bikes in Brainerd and retrofit several tennis courts in St. Paul into the nation's first courts for Sepak Takraw, a traditional Southeast Asian sport.
The goal with those courts, Nelson said, is nothing short of creating future Olympians.
"We want to make big investments that can really transform communities," she said.