Author’s Note:  Readers will remember that for the first two years of Doug Shanahan’s coaching reign at start-up St. Brendan’s we asked Doug to occasionally blog about the experience of developing a new high school program from scratch.  The series was well received and when FLN had a chance to replicate the series at another school we were happy to find Mo Asif, the new coach of the new NCS program in St. Petersburg, willing to do so!  Thanks to Coach Asif for taking this on and we hope the readers will find this a fun read and one that we all can learn from!

    2/7/18 I can finally say that the Northside Mustangs Lacrosse program is underway! I have been waiting to say those words since the proposal was first introduced to the Athletic Director in October of 2012. We were given the “green light” in September of 2016 to start putting together a lacrosse program. Since then the focus has been to motivate the current students to play lacrosse. Many had not even heard of the sport, let alone seen a game. We held student interest meetings for a few months to see where we were with the numbers. Much to our surprise, we had a great number of students show interest in playing lacrosse at Northside. Once we felt comfortable that we would be able to field a full Varsity team we started to focus our attention on the other aspects of building a lacrosse program. We turned our attention to earning the funding for the players’ gear, uniforms, and equipment. In hindsight, I think this was the most challenging aspect of starting a program from scratch. When the time came to get our spring 2018 season underway I was really looking forward to the students coming out and trying out for the program. We had a total of 18 players that were dedicated to learning to play the game of lacrosse. These 18 players will be a part of the inaugural season of Northside Christian Lacrosse! The team consists of high school freshman through seniors, with only two players having some lacrosse experience. As a head coach, I am looking to prepare our players for competition on the field and in life. Lacrosse is an excellent avenue through which I can help provide them with the tools they will need to be the best that they can be, to challenge themselves and to ultimately succeed on and off the field. I am very excited to see where this season takes us and I look forward to sharing our first season of Northside Christian School Lacrosse with all the readers of FloridaLacrosseNews.com. Thanks, Coach Mo Asif