Juanita High School and Lake Washington High School are finally getting their own lacrosse clubs.

Starting this season, lacrosse players with the Kirkland Lacrosse program will play for Lake Washington Lacrosse or Juanita Lacrosse, with high schoolers fed into the respective programs.

The split is only one of many that have occurred in the last 10 years, according to Charlie Bernstein who helps run Lake Washington Lacrosse with head varsity coach Dejon Hush. For years, lacrosse players in the Kirkland area played for Eastside Lacrosse along with youth from Redmond, Bothell, Inglemoor, Woodinville, Eastlake and Sammamish. Eventually, they played with Redmond Lacrosse after it splintered off into its own program, and then finally Kirkland Lacrosse when it split off from Redmond Lacrosse.  From there, it continued to grow, according to founder Steve Lytle, who is now the program director and varsity head coach for Juanita Lacrosse. Starting out with 40 kids, the program ended with 240 prior to the split.

“This is sort of the inevitable last split to get us to this point,” he said. “It’s like growing a small business. It’s more like whack-a-mole. You go to the next problem. Initially, it’s ‘Can we get enough players?’ We quickly figured out that kids is not the hard part. There’s plenty that want to play.”

By 2011, it became difficult to find available fields to practice and hold games. At one point they were circulating through eight separate fields, according to Bernstein. Even then, few of them were turf fields, making them susceptible to poor weather. For the first part of the season, Lytle said, turf fields are essentially required.

“You can’t play on grass as well,” he said. “Our kids start playing in the middle of February and the grass fields aren’t open until March … It depends on the year, but pretty reliably in February the grass is saturated with water. Playing on them is almost impossible. You’ll destroy the field.”

The program also struggled to find available high school fields to rent.

Lacrosse is not recognized by the Washington Interscholastic Athletics Association (WIAA) and therefore not included as a varsity sport at either Lake Washington or Juanita High School, albeit the school district has the authority to designate it as a varsity sport.

“There’s just so many types of groups looking for field space,” Bernstein said. “We knew we had a field problem from accessibility point, so we asked, ‘there anyplace we could find a field to partner with the county, the city and the community on?’”

The program was eventually able to build a turf field in Big Finn Hill Park in early 2013. Though it is their primary field, Bernstein said they still have to rent out other fields in order to accommodate their growing numbers, and there was never any doubt as to whether or not a split in the program would occur.

“What’s happened is it’s growing at such rapid rates its spawning off more teams,” he said. “This is something, we knew, that this day was going to happen. It was a matter of when.”

The size of youth lacrosse programs are restricted by the Washington State Lacrosse Board until they are tied to a high school.

“We have been growing and growing sneaking up to that threshold and last year it became clear it was the last year we would be able to remain a single entity,” Bernstein said. “We tried to prepare and align ourselves as best we could, and now we’re back to start up mode and trying to regrow the program again.”

An immediate effect of the split is a downgrade in their division level from one to two, according to Bernstein. The Lake Washington Lacrosse program hopes to replenish its numbers, however, with a goal of two teams per age group and roughly 150 athletes total. For Juanita, Lytle is hoping to get 250 athletes on the roster.

“The team becomes less competitive, because it lost half its size and players,” Bernstein said. “So that’s a challenge.”

Lytle said, “It’s a combination of wanting to get enough kids that the club is financially viable and then the other piece is that the families ultimately want to be involved with a team that is competitive … that is well run and has good coaching and the kids can go in a game that is close.”

A new challenge for the programs will be handling the additional costs per athlete, as they will have to pay for more coaches, uniforms, equipment and field rentals.

“There’s more strain on the program from a financial viewpoint,” Bernstein said. “We have the same amount of costs, but less players in it. That fixed cost is the same regardless of how many kids we had in the program. We’re trying to do everything we can to keep the dues for the families as low as possible.”

The growth has been so exponentially, in fact, that the program has had a challenging finding coaches in the area, Bernstein said.

“The sport’s so new, it’s not little league baseball where you can usually find something who knows how to catch and throw,” he said. “Because there’s not much DNA of lacrosse in the Northwest, as we grew the program there was a challenge on how to find quality coaches. we still have that challenge today, but we have a fantastic head coach and program director.”

Despite the temporary problems, Bernstein sees them as growing pains for the programs that is gaining in popularity in the state, as well as the country.

“It’s been a very big success from a growth stand point,” he said. “For the most part, it’s been very well embraced.”

Lytle, who grew up playing with Eastside Lacrosse, said they are now concentrating on replenishing their numbers.

“The focus is on redoubling our efforts to get out there and tell families about lacrosse, getting them to come and try it,” he said.