- June 17, 2026
Palm Coast will become the state's epicenter of lacrosse this weekend (June 20-21) when over 150 boys and girls teams of all ages (8 and under through high school) will gather at the Indian Trails Sports Complex for the 18th annual Father’s Day Invitational, organized by Florida United Lacrosse.
The tournament is the largest in Florida, and Florida United also hosts two other super-size tournaments here — the Great Pumpkin Shootout and the Veterans Day Invitational. But don’t expect to see a lot of locals in uniform, because Flagler County does not have a youth sports program.
The tournament runs from sunrise to sunset. It’s a great opportunity to bring kids together and see other competition. It certainly sparks interest here, but then it quickly fades away.
— RYAN ANDREWS, Indian Trails Middle School principal
“The tournament runs from sunrise to sunset,” Indian Trails Middle School Principal Ryan Andrews said. “It’s a great opportunity to bring kids together and see other competition. It certainly sparks interest here, but then it quickly fades away. I haven’t put my finger on the exact cause, but it’s an expensive sport and you need a lot of players and someone who has the knowledge and passion and free time to run it.”
Flagler Palm Coast and Matanzas high schools have boys and girls lacrosse teams, but they have no feeder program. Many of the players who join the high school teams in ninth grade have never even seen a lacrosse game let alone played in one.
Andrews coached FPC’s boys team from 2006 to 2013. When he started, Flagler had a boys club prgoram called Lizards Lacrosse, but there was no girls program. Katie Kastner, who is now FPC’s girls head lacrosse coach, had no choice but to join the Lizards after her family moved down here. But it was a tough sell.
“One of the dads, Steve Noble, ran it,” Kastner said. “He was from Long Island and moved down just like us. After pleading with him, my mom finally got him to let me come out and play keeper. I played keeper with him and then made the transition back to women's lacrosse my freshman year of high school. But my parents, I was very fortunate. I drove to Jacksonville two, three times a week for club practice. I would go to Jacksonville twice a week, Orlando once a week, wherever I could play.”
Kastner went on to play at Jacksonville University for a year and she has coached several future college players at FPC, but many other players she’s had to start by teaching the basics, passing and catching.
“It's hard when you're trying to coach somebody who's going to the collegiate level, and then you're coaching the girl next to her who's brand new. So that that's what makes this area hard,” she said.
Kastner calls the county a dry zone for lacrosse. Volusia County does not have any high school lacrosse. The only nearby high school teams for both the boys and girls games are in St. Johns County.
Travel is one problem. The overall expense is the largest stumbling block, coaches say.
“It’s hard now a days with how expensive the gear is,” said Dominic Tavolacci, who played for both Matanzas and FPC, graduating at FPC in 2023 before playing a year at Nassau Community College on Long Island, New York. Tavolacci is now the head coach at Matanzas.
“With basketball tryouts you just bring shoes and water,” he said. “To play lacrosse, you need a helmet at close to $300, pads are close to $400 total, cleats on top of that are $100 if not more, and the stick is $150 to $200. If you buy cheaper sticks, they’ll snap. Nobody wants to pay close to a grand just to get on the field and see if you like it.”
Dewey Schoenfelder, who grew up playing lacrosse in Maryland and went on to play college lacrosse, is finding that out. He’s trying to start youth programs in Flagler County under the Zingos name which was his club team in Maryland. So far he’s been doing some personal training.
“The numbers are hard to come by here,” he said. “Just to play the sport is expensive. I have four or five kids ready to play. That’s not enough for a team. I’ve been working on growing it here. It’s a slow process.”
Tavolacci is leading a twice-a-month pick-up game this summer at Wadsworth Park. The opening week, on June 7, drew nearly 40 players from current high school players to older players. The oldest player was close to 50, he said. They will play again at 10 a.m. June 28. There’s more information on Instagram at pc_pickup_lax.
Lacrosse has a long history in Flagler County. FPC’s program is over 30 years old. Tom West coached at FPC and started the program at Matanzas. He created travel programs so the players could play all year long, Andrews said. He was instrumental in luring the Father’s Day tournament here, Andrews said, adding, “It doesn’t hurt that we have amazing facilities.”
West left Flagler County to coach at Ponte Vedra High School, where he won eight district titles and one state championship before moving on to the Bolles School in Jacksonville.
There have been other youth programs after the Lizards, which last several years as Noble’s sons moved up through the ranks. There were Blue Skies, the Wave and Goatlax, which Efrain Gutierrez ran. Gutierrez was an assistant coach at Matanzas for several years and then was the Pirates’ head coach from 2016 to 2018. He left to help Flagler College in St. Augustine start its lacrosse program.
Gutierrez, who was recently hired as an assistant principal at ITMS, signed the Goatlax program over to Matanzas parents when he left. The program wound up merging with Lions Lacrosse in St. Augustine, he said.
Matanzas girls lacrosse coach Brandie Alred agreed with Kastner about the difficulty of melding girls brand new to the sport with experienced high school players. Alred said new players can be drill killers, dropping the ball so much that ball movement can't be sustained. So she took her team to ITMS to work with middle school kids in their PE classes on passing and catching using a tennis ball.
“If we can start getting middle school involvement, when we get them they can be learning strategy and not just learning the basics,” Alred said.
Andrews said the Indian Trails kids were having a lot of fun and showing surprising athleticism with the new skills they were learning. ITMS has 20 to 30 lacrosse sticks for the PE department to utilize, he said.
“Plans are in the works to continue it as a lesson in PE,” Andrews said. “It’s a very downsized version of what the sport can be. But the essential fundamentals are passing and catching, and if the PE teachers can incorporate that, it can give the kids a starting point. Brandie’s initiative is not just to expose the students to lacrosse, but the PE teachers as well. There’s a lot reluctance [by the teachers], not because they don’t want to, they just don’t know how.”
Andrews can get passionate when talking about the sport he grew up playing in New York State.
“It could take off here,” he said. “It’s a wonderful sport. As soon as any kids I have ever coached learn lacrosse, they fall in love with it. They learn that all the things they loved about their old sport is included in lacrosse — the physicality, the hand-eye coordination. The athleticism is unmatched in my opinion — the side to side agility of a free safety, the endurance sprints of a receiver, all while someone is trying to beat you with a stick. The ballet-like choreography of offense and defense, it’s a beautiful thing.”
