Central Alberta Lacrosse players will be in Lacombe this evening to help raise funds for an upcoming trip to California. 

The Evolve Alberta Bantam Region team has players from Lacombe, Sylvan Lake, Red Deer, Olds, Okotoks, Didsbury and Calgary that are working hard to save up for the US Box Nationals, taking place August 2-4 in Huntington Beach, California.

 In addition to collecting bottles for their team tonight, the players will also be hosting a food drive to show support for the Lacombe community. 

Noah Cooper and Colin Heisler are two local boys that help to make up the 18 person roster. Connie Cooper, Noah’s mother, is responsible for helping to organize tonight’s fundraiser. 

“I’m a strong believer that if you’re going to take from the community, you need to give back to the community,” she said.  

“Any time we’ve gone around for minor sports fundraisers, our community has been so generous and so supportive of us, so I always like to do something to give back at the same time. We thought at the same time they go around collecting bottles, they could also use that time to collect food for our food bank.”

The team is mostly made of the Red Deer Chiefs Bantam-A team, with a few players from Calgary-area in tow for the national event in California. Evolve Alberta team coach John Lewis said it’s been an exciting year for his team and they are eager to show off their skills south of the border.

“This year, right off the bat, the boys really came out and showed me that they wanted to play, and wanted to win and were willing to try and push the limits of what they believed they were capable of,” Lewis said. 

In addition to bottle drives in various home communities of the players, they spent the last two weeks volunteering at the Ponoka Stampede and Westerner Days in Red Deer to help secure some funding for the trip. 

The team has been sponsored and supported by Evolve Lacrosse, who usually work with field lacrosse players, as opposed to box lacrosse. Lewis said it’s the first time a box team has been sent by Evolve to compete under their banner in the United States. 

“It’s been great, a lot of people have been asking the boys what they’re doing, why they’re going and people are excited for us to go and compete against the Americans in our game,” Lewis said. “It’s been awesome to see the support people have shown us so far.”