I am excited to welcome you all ahead of the 2023-24 lacrosse season and I hope you are all looking forward to the year ahead.

Thank you for those of you re-joining England Lacrosse for another year and a big welcome to those of you embarking on your first season as a member – Welcome to the lacrosse family!

As CEO, I want to acknowledge that we have successes to celebrate and challenges to meet, so with your continued support, I am not just hopeful, but excited for the next year.

Our united vision has been and remains – to promote lacrosse in all its forms. We all share this vision and through our collective passion for lacrosse we have achieved excellent results in the past year, a full competitive domestic calendar, a European Gold medal and a 6th place at World level, to highlight a few.

These achievements are not possible without all of you championing and elevating the sport every day, so thank you.

We have been working hard to get the new season up and running and look forward to working closely with you to support and develop lacrosse in England.

We provide plenty of opportunities for competition throughout the season with full league competitions up and down the country as well as events such as National Schools, Club Finals, Flags Festivals, Super Counties and of course our great weekend events like Bath Eights and BluesFest representing just a small taste of the lacrosse available to our membership across all ages.

In addition, there is more box lacrosse than ever, a national mixed lacrosse league, and a host of Sixes events such as The Fly meaning our lacrosse calendars are busy and thriving.

I believe there have never been more opportunities for players and for teams to play the game and a big thank you to all those who help make this happen.

We are also keen to promote a strong message around ‘Safe Sport’, helping to ensure that our lacrosse is a well-run and welcoming environment for all.

Promoting ‘Safe Sport’ is everyone’s responsibility whether you are a player, coach, official or volunteering your time to help the sport out, we all have a role to play.

From safeguarding education and standards, through to registering as a player, coaching and officiating so you are insured, and beyond into anti-doping (Click Here), injury monitoring and player safety; we all need to promote and deliver Safe Lacrosse.

We have resources in this membership pack to help everyone to do this and I encourage you help promote the Safe Lacrosse message throughout the season.  Remember, you get money off your courses in the pack by being a member.

This year’s international calendar sees the Women’s U20 World Championships in Hong Kong and a joint Men’s and Women’s box World Championships with the women’s competition being added for the first time in the USA.

Earlier this year, we set the wheels in motion to establish the first official England Women’s Box Lacrosse team, and this will be a unique moment when they compete in 2024 for the first time.

The Women’s senior squad will be defending their gold medal at the European Championship in Portugal while Poland hosts the Under 20 Men’s Europeans to round off an absolutely stacked summer for our national squads.

We are also waiting with huge anticipation for the decision on LA2028 Olympic Games to include lacrosse. The prestige and profile will undoubtedly be significant if we are successful, and we all have our fingers crossed for us being IN.

National Lacrosse Day, Saturday 16th September is always a great marker for the start of our season, and I know many clubs across the country take this weekend to celebrate all the brilliant people within our lacrosse communities that make it such a special sport to be a part of!

Thank you for renewing your membership, your support does so much for the game and a warm welcome to those who are joining for the first time.  I hope you all enjoy the year.