 Brainard La Crosse is getting called up to the big leagues after playing in the last few years at the club level. 2018 will be their first season as an official school sport. Our AJ Feldman has more. One, two, three. Warriors! There's a lot of excitement in the Brainard La Crosse program as both the boys and girls teams will play as an official school sport for the very first time. When I figured out that we were a sport, I was so excited because, I mean, it was fun as a club, but it wasn't as competitive. You didn't get as much recognition as if you were a sport. The program needed to make the jump as more schools adopted their own official La Crosse teams. We were only going to be able to play four teams if we weren't going to be a school sport, so now we get to play 13 games, which is pretty awesome. The program has grown a lot in the past few years, picking up players who joined because their friends play or because they've seen the sport while watching Teen Wolf. I actually watched TV and I saw, like, on the show that they played La Crosse. So then when I figured out that they played La Crosse here, I was super excited and I played and then it just stuck. It's just a weird sport that nobody knows about, really, and it's new in our area, so a lot of kids were like, oh, yeah, you know, I'll do that. Many of the newer players also play hockey, which allows for a lot of skills to translate from the ice to the field. I think one of the biggest things is that it relies on a lot of hand skills like hockey does so that hockey kind of correlates really well or there's not a lot of transition for the guys that play hockey. While Brainer the Cross may have its growing pains in the first year, new players are already improving, which should lead to a bright future. The development of these kids from the first practice even this week till today, I mean, you can just see it. So they're picking it up quick and the older kids are really supportive and helping the younger kids, so it's going well. So when you watch them go throughout the season and you watch their skills get better and better, it's just something amazing to look back on. You can really see them improve, like, with yourself. If you didn't really know when you were improving or not, but like with the kids that started out, you can see them improve and that's also exciting. In the years coming, we're going to have those kids as our leaders. We're all going to leave and we're going to have to have somebody behind us. And then we have a good group of kids that are coming in after us, so it'll work. Reporting in Brainerd, A.J. Feldman, Lakeland News. Thanks, A.J. Here's the opener for the Brainer boys on the road at Southwest Christian Saturday, April 14th at 3 p.m. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.