Grant Lucas/The Bulletin Bend High lacrosse player James Rockett participated in the team’s weekly yoga session on April 16.

The mid-afternoon sun casts its rays through the windows of the Bend High wrestling room, greeting the young Lava Bear athletes as they shuffle toward the middle of the mat. Wasting little time, each player settles into his own spot, just beyond an arm’s reach of any surrounding teammate.

Standing before them is Kelby Christ, a yoga instructor, who asks the group of lacrosse players to lie back, to relax, to “become aware” of their breathing. In. And out.

Over the next hour or so, the Lava Bears are led through what Christ describes as a therapeutic session of Hatha yoga, which focuses on physical and mental strength-building exercises.

This is Bend High boys lacrosse. This is where the Lava Bears have spent one hour each week for the past two seasons. This is where they go to escape the real world, where their stress, strain and pain are eased.

“Our legs aren’t as tight. Our muscles aren’t as tight,” says Bend High senior Andrew Joyce. “So we can play a little better, run a little faster.”

The regimen began near the end of Joe Kerwin’s tenure as the men’s lacrosse club coach at Oregon, where he spent eight seasons over two stints and led the Ducks to seven Pacific Northwest Collegiate Lacrosse League titles as well as seven Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association national tournament appearances. Soon after implementing yoga as a training tool, Kerwin began seeing subtle changes.

Injuries within the Oregon program began to decline, and the Ducks’ speed, flexibility and overall strength began to increase.

After Kerwin moved to Central Oregon in summer 2012 to take over the Bend High program, the yoga regimen was carried over, if only because of tremendous fortune. A chance run-in with Christ soon after Kerwin’s arrival allowed the Bend coach to discover that she was a yoga instructor from New Jersey — Kerwin’s home state. Later, as Kerwin feared he might have to purchase individual yoga mats for each player, Bend High wrestling coach Luke Larwin offered a single mat — the wrestling room. “It all just came together,” Kerwin says.

Team yoga sessions began about a month before the 2013 season kicked off, Christ serving as the team’s instructor-on-retainer, so to speak. The routine has not changed since: practice for about an hour and a half at nearby 15th Street Field, caravan back to the high school’s wrestling room, do yoga for an hour. Each session is an extension of practice, serving a purpose similar to lifting weights or running, as players built core strength while developing flexibility.

When he introduced yoga into the practice plan, Kerwin expected more of a reaction, something along the lines of players laughing the idea off or voicing their displeasure. (Bend senior James Rockett recalls: “We all thought it was kind of a weird thing to do.”) But as soon as they began, and ever since, the Lava Bears have wished they had the sessions before. But, as senior Lake Larsen says, “it’s nice that we have it now.”

“When Joe first brought it up, we kind of thought it was going to be a joke, kind of a mess-around thing,” Larsen recalls. “But everyone took it seriously, and it helps so much. We’re out there practicing so hard and get really high-strung. But when we go to yoga, it’s like, calm down, take a deep breath, slow things down, clear your head and get ready for the next game.”

Clearing one’s head, with yoga, that is the common takeaway among the Lava Bears. And it is, for the most part, the intent of the yoga sessions. Each student-athlete is granted an hour (give or take) to get away from the video games, to escape the world of homework, chores and other strenuous activities. It is a chance, Kerwin says, for each player to “slow down and take a deep breath.”

“It’s pretty rare when high school kids get a chance to step away from all the media in their lives,” Kerwin says, “just kind of get a chance to focus on their breathing and kind of be in a calm place.”

Since the Lava Bears began the yoga sessions, muscle-related injuries have plummeted. Since the beginning of the 2013 season, according to Kerwin, only two players have missed games — one for a rolled ankle, the other for a bruised sternum. No one, the coach says, has been sidelined with muscle-related injuries.

For that very reason — injury prevention — other area prep teams have turned to yoga.

Staying at Bend High, coaches Lisa Nye and Kyle Will over the past two years have put their cross-country and track distance runners through yoga sessions led by one of the coaches. Across town at Mountain View, football coach Brian Crum has gotten his team involved in yoga the past two summers. Will and Crum both say that the sessions have been “great” for flexibility and strength, and useful for injury prevention.

“It’s good team-building. I don’t stick around (during the yoga sessions). It’s a good chance for them to be together and do something other than lacrosse,” Kerwin says. “They’re just together. They’re doing something maybe that they’re not necessarily comfortable doing. I think that’s a huge benefit of it is that these guys get to be together off the field.”

And that off-field team development has translated onto the field, where the Lava Bears are 8-1 so far this season and as of Sunday were ranked No. 9 in the Oregon High School Lacrosse Association computer rankings.

“We’ve really seen it this year,” Kerwin says. “Our chemistry this year has been phenomenal. We have a really young team. So the fact that we have such great chemistry has just been a huge part of our success early on here.”

It is difficult to affirm that the weekly yoga sessions have influenced Bend High’s overall performance since the beginning of the 2013 season. Different factors play into that — physical training, quality coaching and, at times, lucky bounces.

But Bend High senior Quinn Fettig notes that, even with similar personnel, the turnaround of the Lava Bears’ lacrosse program has been sudden over the past two seasons. In the six years leading up to Kerwin’s arrival, Bend High’s combined record was 48-47 (a .505 winning percentage). During those years, the Bears lost in the first round of the OHSLA state playoffs five times and fell in a play-in game in 2012.

Since the institution of weekly yoga, Bend is 20-8, including its fast start this season. Last year, the Lava Bears won a state playoff game for the first time before being eliminated in the second round. And this season, they are outscoring opponents 137-25.

“I could see it being a little superstitious, but it (yoga) actually does help a lot because we feel a lot looser when we play,” Larsen says. “It’s pretty easy to psych yourself out about the upcoming opponent, but when you have the chance to sit back and just let everything go instead of just concentrating on just that opponent, it’s nice to let things go and just restart.”

“Just being able to clear your head for an hour every week and getting everything out,” Joyce says, “forget about the field, forget about school, forget about everything, it’s really nice.”

The “dead man’s pose” is a part of the Lava Bears’ weekly yoga sessions. Players are instructed to lie flat on their backs, their legs fully extended and split comfortably apart. Their arms are spread slightly from their sides and their palms face the ceiling. Only rarely, Fettig says, does at least one player not fall asleep in this position.

This is where the session ends, where the mind is completely cleared and each player is relaxed. This is where their only concern in the world is focusing on their breathing. In. And out.

—Reporter: 541-383-0307, glucas@bendbulletin.com.