When one door closes, sometimes the accompanying window can’t open until someone builds it. Niverville High School (NHS) student Antonio DaPalma is a builder of such proverbial windows.

With no club volleyball to close out his senior year of high school, DaPalma decided to introduce the student body to field lacrosse.

“I have grown up playing volleyball, and that’s been my sport ever since Grade Seven or Eight,” DaPalma says. “But unfortunately, this year, my [club] couldn’t put a team together.”

The high school volleyball season is brief, however, leading DaPalma to fill the rest of his free time playing with the Providence Junior Pilots. That team played in Winnipeg and Brandon and, over the past three years, competed at the national level in Edmonton.

“We were already sad that this was going to be his last year [playing club volleyball],” says DaPalma’s mom, Ashley. “He had no idea the team would fold, but they only had five boys.”

Not wanting to waste precious time feeling sorry for himself, DaPalma began to explore the idea of learning a whole new sport.

“I’m a very spontaneous person and I’m always willing to learn new things,” he says. “I had lacrosse in my mind because I’ve watched it and found it interesting. I figured there’s no better time to try a new sport than now, because I have nothing better to do.”

For many Canadians, lacrosse isn’t well known despite it being recognized as Canada’s national summer sport. Its origins trace back to the Indigenous peoples and today it’s recognized worldwide.

DaPalma believed others might share his desire to learn the sport, so he set out to build a team. Within no time, he had garnered the interest of at least 22 students from across all grade levels, including one female.

A few of them had already been playing for the Southman Saints Lacrosse Club in Ste. Agathe. Indeed, the Southman Saints agreed to loan their equipment to the NHS startup team for its first year.

Next, DaPalma and his mother set out to find a coach. They found him living in Niverville and ready to step in assuming a team could be approved.

It was now time to pitch the idea to the school’s principal, Paul Grosskopf.

“When students come to me with an idea, I will never say no,” says Grosskopf. “I will listen to them first. We want to build community and culture, and this is a prime example of students doing just that.”

With a full gym schedule and little funding to support more equipment, it isn’t an easy sell to request a whole new sports program. But something tipped the scales in DaPalma’s favour, according to Grosskopf says: the project was completely student-initiated. DaPalma had done all the legwork to prove the idea had merit.

There was only one more box left to check. The prospective team now had to join a league.

One week ago, the Niverville High School lacrosse team was welcomed as the newest member of the Manitoba High School Field Lacrosse League. Play will officially run from April to June, giving the local squad only two months to learn the game and practice teamwork. Games will take place at Winnipeg’s Shaughnessy Park.

Though field lacrosse is an outdoor sport, the team will need to practice in the school gym until the weather changes. They will begin on Tuesday, February 10, with an introduction to the sport for students and their parents.

Afterward, once buy-in is confirmed, Ashley hopes to start fundraising for jerseys and registration costs to ease the burden for players to join. As for personal protective gear, hockey equipment translates over to lacrosse pretty well.

With graduation just around the corner, DaPalma’s participation with the team will be brief. Still, he hopes the enthusiasm demonstrated by students this year will translate into long-term adoption.

“If I can start something that lasts for years in the school, then I’m completely happy with that,” DaPalma says. “I didn’t want to have a team of just seniors where, next year, if this program continues, they have nobody to play.”

As for learning a whole new sport in time for the upcoming season, DaPalma says he’s up for the challenge.