Welcome to the 2025
Nepean Knights U15-1 Tryouts
I am very excited to have been named the Head Coach for the
U15-1 Nepean Knights for the 2024-2025 season. I am more than excited to return
to the bench and lead this team. For
those that do not know me, my name is Mark Lange. I have been coaching box lacrosse with the
Knights since 2019, and have been involved with the sport, though mostly with
field lacrosse, my entire life. I have
recently had the privilege of serving as the Head Coach at Carleton University
with their field lacrosse program from 2020-2024. It is through my many years of experience in
the game that I have shaped my philosophy and am really excited to work with
these athletes!
My
philosophy:
It is our job to allow our players to collectively grow
together as athletes, friends, teammates, people and competitors! To do this, we need to play and live by a set
of PRINCIPLES, that creates accountability to each other as teammates to be
great as ONE collective unit.
Tryouts:
Please familiarize yourself with
the Knights Tryout Process, as well as our tryout schedule.
All players need to be wearing all the proper equipment, including mouthguards and bicep
pads, to be on the floor during tryouts.
I will not make exceptions for mouth guards during tryouts or practices,
so please ensure your child has one ready to go. I am so excited to see all the new
registrations. Please note that tryouts are full contact
lacrosse. Safety will be our
priority on the floor, but if you, or your child has any questions as to what
full contact lacrosse entails before playing in scrimmages and drills with
experienced players, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I plan to assign 15-17 runners and 2 goalies to the roster,
depending on how tryouts progress.
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Tier 1 Skills and Abilities:
● Coachability
● Effort
● Teamwork
● Discipline
● Respectfulness
● Level
of physical conditioning
● Mental
Toughness
● Passion
for the sport
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Tier 2 Skills
Skills and Abilities
● Game
IQ
● Quick/smart
decision making
● Level
of physical conditioning
● Defensive
skills
● Lacrosse
skills
● Speed,
agility, and quickness
● Strength
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A message to your athlete: You must possess all of the Tier 1 skills to
make this team! The more tier 2 skills
you have the better, however, you will not be selected if you do not display
Tier 1 skills each time you are on the floor.
To me, it does not matter if you are a first time player, someone who
has played for years, or somewhere in between.
I want coachable, hard working, respectful athletes, who are passionate
about the sport of lacrosse. Over my
many years of coaching, I have come to learn that the culture and environment
that the coaches, players and parents create is the most important factor in
our team's success, or lack thereof. I
want to work with coachable, hard working, respectful athletes, who are
passionate about the sport of lacrosse first.
I will be available to discuss
individual questions that you may have in the days following the tryouts at the
following address: [email protected]. I only ask that if you reach out for comment
about your son's tryout, you wait 24 hours from the time of his release before
you reach out, and that you CC both the president and competitive director to
your email as well. Their emails can be
found below.
Release
process:
Each player will attend the first 2 tryout sessions. If you have a conflict with any tryout
sessions please let me know asap. Tryouts are expected to be a high priority
for your athlete and they should only miss for the most unavoidable
conflicts. Tryout conflicts must be
communicated BEFORE Saturday.
The release process will be
different this year. You will go to a
link on the Knights website provided by the organization. Players invited to
return will be posted by first initial and last name. I expect to make releases after the 2nd, 3rd,
4th, as well as the 5th and final tryout. (these are subject to change at Head
Coach’s discretion) If you are released
from Team 1, or choose to not tryout for the team 1 level, then you will move
on to Team 2 tryouts, which will be listed on the Knights website. The numbers may support a team 3. If you are interested in coaching either the
team 2 or 3 team, please reach out to the Knights Competitive Director to
indicate your interest.
Schedule/Tournaments:
The pre-season Ontario Lacrosse
Association rating for the U15 #1 Nepean Knights is “B”. Despite this rating,
we strongly feel that we have an opportunity to play A ball this year. For those that do not understand what I am
talking about here, please feel free to ask me to explain it at tryouts. As
some already know, I love talking about lacrosse!
The U15-1 team will play mostly weekend zone games (league
games) in April, May, June and July
against other zone 5 teams (e.g., Gloucester, Cornwall, Akwesasne, Kingston,
Quinte, and Kahnawake). We are also
looking into interzone competition this year against other A centers.
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In-Season Tournaments
• Laker
Classic
(Peterborough: May 23-25)
• Orangeville
Tournament
(Orangeville: June 20-22)
• Ray
Broadworth
Tournament (Gloucester:
July
4-6)
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Post Season Tournaments
If we make “A”
• “A”
Qualifier Weekend 1
(Whitby: July 18-20)
• “A”
Qualifier Weekend 2
(St. Catherines: July
25-27)
• Final
six “A” Championships,
(Whitby:
August 7-9)
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Post Season If
we make “B”
• Zone
Championships (Local:
Late July)
• Provincial
Championships
(Whitby:
August 1-3)
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Financial
and Team Commitment:
On top of the registration fee for U15-1 competitive
lacrosse, we will also have a team fee.
You should expect this fee to be around $500-$700 (estimate) on top of
your registration fee. Players on competitive teams will be expected to follow
the Knights dress code - Knights black polo shirt with khaki shorts. The cost
of the polo shirt and shorts will be paid by the individual families. Game
shorts with the Knights logo will also be required at an additional cost. Polo
shirts and game shorts will be ordered by the team manager.
All players are expected to
participate in practices during the week as well as dryland training. The
practice schedule is not confirmed yet, but you can expect 2-3 practices per
week. Each practice will be 2 hours long, including 35 minutes of dryland training
before we hit the floor for 90 minutes. Conditioning sessions and other
lacrosse and team building activities will be run occasionally as a team at
other times.
Thank you and best of luck to
your child during the tryouts. Please click on this link
to fill out the google form that has some additional questions in preparation
for tryouts. Please see below as well
for a note from the board as well.
All the best,
Mark Lange Head Coach U15-1 [email protected]
Welcome to the 2025 lacrosse
season. The Nepean Knights Minor Lacrosse Association is happy to have you join
this year’s competitive tryout process. The Board would like to provide you
with some important details that may ease the process along the way. To begin,
we invite you to review our Tryout Process page on our website. This
outlines the standard process your player will follow and also lists some
requirements. We encourage you to review the required equipment and have your
player try on their last year’s equipment ahead of time to ensure it fits.
No player will be allowed to step onto the floor and tryout unless they
are properly equipped.
Members of the Board will be
at tryouts and available to you if you have any questions. We will also have
competitive clothing available for your player to try on so you can order the
right sizing should your player make a competitive team. We ask that you have
your player do a “fit check” on day 1 of their tryout.
The tryout process can be
intense and riddled with emotions. As a Board, we recognize how difficult this
can be for some players/families. We respect all feelings and encourage you to
reach out to the Board when needed, however, we ask everyone to respect the
24-hr rule. This means taking the time step away and consider the message you
would like to send before doing so. We will make ourselves available to you for
discussions on any topic at that point.
If you have general questions
regarding the competitive program, coaches, or the Association, please feel
free to contact your respective Competitive Director below, our Coach Mentor,
and/or President and Vice President.
We look forward to seeing you
all on the floor and running another great season with our Knights Family.
Nathan Grenon, Competitive
Director: [email protected]
Tanya Mewhinney, Girls
Director: [email protected]
Jeff Zywicki, Coach Mentor: [email protected]
Josh Hornung, President: [email protected]
Martine
McFarlane, Vice President: [email protected]