This article appears in the July/August edition of US Lacrosse Magazine, a digital-only publication available exclusively to US Lacrosse members. Join or renew today for access to this 96-page edition, which includes immersive and interactive features as well as video tips from professional players. Thank you for your support!
Jeff Weiner and his wife, Angie, could not bring their phones into the fancy restaurant. They were about to spend a lot of money on a Gordon Ramsey tasting menu at a hotel in Versailles, part of their long-planned trip to France five years ago. Under most circumstances, they would have gladly pitched their devices. But c’mon, this was the Great Pumpkin Shootout.
The couple politely declined, grabbed some crepes from a street vendor and fawned over their screens for updates on the Farzata’s performance in the annual Homegrown Lacrosse 7-on-7 tournament in Minnesota.
If Farzata sounds like a fictional town, that’s because it is. It’s a portmanteau of Fargo and Wayzata, the North Dakota city and Minneapolis suburb, respectively, whose boys’ lacrosse teams struck up an unlikely kinship in 2014 that continues today.
More than 230 miles separate the two municipalities. But when the Fargo-Moorhead based Red River Valley Lacrosse Association needed players for the tournament’s 12U bracket, the Wayzata Lacrosse Association became a brother league.
Hockey tryouts typically put the RRVLA and WLA out of commission in the fall. Between the two of them, however, they could cobble together enough participants to enter the Great Pumpkin Shootout, which Homegrown Lacrosse bills as “our way of bringing together the expanding Upper Midwest lacrosse community.” The event follows US Lacrosse age eligibility guidelines and membership requirements.
“Give me 24 hours,” Weiner, the WLA president, told Homegrown’s Jesse Brown. “I’ll find some players.”
The call came at 8 p.m. on a Wednesday. The players met on the field that Saturday morning, an hour before their first game of the tournament. There was an all-RRVLA attack, an all-WLA defense, a blended midfield and even a goalie from Wisconsin.
They went 2-0-1 in pool play and beat a team from Manitoba (Canada) in the playoffs the next day before their Cinderella run ended with a two-goal loss to a team from Chicago.
A ragtag group with mismatched helmets and shorts that clashed, the legend of Farzata was born. It galvanized the boys who were complete strangers just 27 hours earlier.
“They built that relationship based on the Bad News Bears [reputation]. It was a passion to play,” said Matt Gilbertson, the former RRVLA coach who is now the president of the Moorhead Lacrosse Booster Club. “I don’t think you could pull that off in too many other sports.”