Dan Badders speaks with cautious optimism, ensuring that each statement is both tempered by reality and delivered with the enthusiasm that advocates of lacrosse have long possessed, an outlook that has helped the sport become one of the fastest-growing high school sports in the country.

The Oregon High School Lacrosse Association commissioner has ample reason for such a positive outlook, because after 21 years of being nurtured by the OHSLA, lacrosse is on the doorstep of a goal set two decades ago by the same organization: becoming a full-fledged sport within the Oregon School Activities Association.

OSAA bylaws state that the governing body for high school sports in Oregon can sanction a sport if 50 schools sponsor it. This season, the OHSLA, the state’s boys lacrosse association, lists exactly 50 varsity members, and 39 schools play in the Oregon Girls Lacrosse Association. The OSAA will only consider lacrosse for sanctioning if both genders meet the threshold, meaning that 11 more high schools must offer girls lacrosse. If that happens, and assuming the OHSLA does not dip below 50 members, the OSAA may consider making lacrosse the first new OSAA-sanctioned sport since softball was added in 1979.

“What it would do for lacrosse overall, it would be beneficial,” Badders says. “Everybody wants to be the champion of something. We have our state championships. They’re just not OSAA state champions.”

As much as excitement surrounds that prospect, however, Badders’ cautious optimism persists.

“Just because we have 50 schools doesn’t automatically mean the OSAA will take that on,” he says. “Even if we had 50 (boys programs) and 50 (girls programs) this year, I would envision it being a two- to three-year process before we would be brought on.”

Between 1997 and 2007 the number of lacrosse teams nationwide grew by more than 2,000, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. During that same span, the number of participants increased by more than 10 percent each year. In Oregon, the OHSLA went from 24 teams in 2002 to 50 this season, including six varsity and six junior varsity teams in Central Oregon. And since 2007, the OGLA has increased by 11 varsity teams, including a second Bend squad this season.

Yet even with the sport’s growing popularity, Badders does not foresee lacrosse being sanctioned by the OSAA for at least five years. The process for consideration, however, could begin much sooner. Once the minimum of 50 teams in both the boys and girls organizations is met, and as soon as four schools from four different leagues submit a formal request, the OSAA will begin a study, OSAA executive director Tom Welter said.

The OSAA follows 13 criteria when it examines the prospect of adding a sport, from the support of superintendents, administration and management of the sport, to site availability and financial impact on the member schools and the OSAA. Lacrosse — which is also offered at Mountain View, Redmond High, Ridgeview and Sisters High — is currently a club sport and receives no funding from their respective school districts.

“Lacrosse, with all the equipment, that’s a significant financial undertaking for a district in order to fund it as they do other OSAA-sponsored sports,” Welter observes. “I’m not saying that shouldn’t happen. I’m just saying right now the cost is a deterrent for schools wishing to sponsor it.”

For Central Oregon, which this season boasts two of the top boys teams in the OHSLA (Bend and Summit) and in the OGLA (Bend, made up of athletes from Bend and Mountain View high schools, and Summit both hosted first-round state playoff games on Monday), the financial impact of adding lacrosse could be significant, Mountain View athletic director Dave Hood says.

Badders expects teams to have better access to fields and better funding if the OSAA sponsors lacrosse. “It’s not cheap, especially for here in Central Oregon,” Hood explains. “You’re playing teams across the state. Transportation is a significant issue. Officials’ cost is a significant issue. … It comes with a cost. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just a different thing. Then the districts may look at it and say, ‘Do we cut something in order to offer lacrosse?’ I would hope they don’t do that because we’re really proud of the breadth of opportunities we offer kids.”

Badders is confident that once the OGLA reaches 50 members, there will be “enough presence and enough awareness that this will be picked up as an OSAA-sanctioned sport.” Hood agrees, and he trusts that Bend-La Pine Schools will find a way to sponsor lacrosse.

“Almost everyone I know in education, including, I’m sure, all the members of the (OSAA) delegate assembly are super supportive of opportunities and activities for kids. That’s why we’re doing what we do,” Hood says. “We’re also super sensitive to our sources of revenue, which is the taxpayer dollars, and we are already slicing that pie thinner and thinner. You have probably 1 to 2 percent of all the school district’s budget going to athletics, so it’s a tiny portion. But the benefit (of adding lacrosse) is huge.”

The OSAA will examine lacrosse from top to bottom, from the number of schools that offer the sport to the “nitty-gritty,” as Welter describes it, such as the availability of playing fields and qualified officials — two areas that have troubled the OHSLA.

Still, there is no arguing the growing popularity of lacrosse, for which national participation rates have spiked by more than 150 percent since 2001 for both boys and girls. It is no different in Central Oregon. And in the near future, the area could boast one of the first OSAA lacrosse state champions.

“For us, I think, with the interest level in this town that I see in the youth and in the high school kids, I’m sure that we would be happy to offer (lacrosse),” Hood says. “I just don’t know how we would do that financially. That’s something that the budget committee and the school board will have to make a decision on.”

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