This article appears in the Pacific Northwest version of the July/August edition of US Lacrosse Magazine. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription.
Roseburg, Ore., a town of about 30,000 people, is located approximately 70 miles south of Eugene and situated on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains. It’s prime timber country, and heavy industrial logging has long dominated the local economy.
That same logging industry was the catalyst that brought former Maryland native and 1990s Johns Hopkins standout Werner Krueger to the area. Krueger is a forester who accepted a job with the Bureau of Land Management in 2004, moving sight unseen to Roseburg. He was pretty sure at the time that he had left lacrosse behind.
To his surprise, in his first month in Roseburg, the local newspaper featured a front-page story about the high school lacrosse team. It didn’t take Krueger very long to connect with the coach, Paul Bilder, and join the program as an assistant.
“It took me about two seconds to find his number,” Krueger said. “I’m like a moth to a flame.”
Bilder, a physician and himself a transplanted New Yorker, was the founder of the program — the Indian Lacrosse Club — and had personally funded some the start-up cost for the club.
“Roseburg was the Siberia of lacrosse when I arrived in Oregon,” Bilder said. “There was no lacrosse anywhere around here.”
Bilder was motivated to start the team at the request of his son, Christopher, who was entering high school. They fielded their first team in 2001. They added a girls’ team the following year.
“Thirty kids showed up at our first meeting, mostly football players,” Bilder said. “Only one player had ever played before. Most had never even seen a game.”
With no other local teams, Roseburg had to travel to Portland, about 170 miles to the north, virtually every weekend for games. They would play games Friday night, Saturday and Sunday before retuning home.
Krueger’s commitment allowed the club to begin developing a feeder system so that boys and girls were not being introduced to the game for the first time at the high school level.
“At some point, we knew we had to start a youth lacrosse program,” Krueger said.
In 2006, in collaboration with the local Boys & Girls Club, Krueger and Bilder helped launch a middle school lacrosse program. In 2017, Roseburg added an elementary division. The growth has been steady.
“We started with 20 kids, and we now have about 60 kids combined in the middle school and elementary programs,” Krueger said.
A First Stick Program grant from US Lacrosse has helped to provide needed equipment, while Soft Stick Program grants are helping to bring the game into physical education classes at several of the area’s elementary schools.
“Having their introduction to lacrosse in fourth grade is really going to help the growth of the game,” Krueger said. “It’s helping to bring more notoriety and awareness of lacrosse into the community.”
Roseburg’s U14 team competes in a league based in Eugene, requiring weekly travel. The younger players have Saturday morning games in Roseburg, usually focused on small-sided play to enhance skill development.
“We’re just in year two, but we’re excited to see what years three, four and five will bring,” Krueger said.
Through the commitment of men like Bilder and Krueger, and those that they have fostered over the past 15 years, lacrosse is making an impact.
“Kids who have come through our program are now helping with programs across the state,” Bilder said.
“The Roseburg community is really rallying behind lacrosse, and we hope that their enthusiasm will help us get more of the adjacent communities to also start youth programs,” said Lyn Porterfield, Pacific Northwest regional manager at US Lacrosse.
“We’ve done it in reverse,” Krueger said. “We started with the high school club and worked our way backwards. But seeing kids walking around with lacrosse sticks in Roseburg is pretty cool. I think we’re hitting the mark.”
