James River High School Senior, Thomas Rulof, talks about his experience using service through sport to complete his Capstone Project.
My Capstone project was a youth lacrosse clinic for boys in 5th-9th grade. I grew up playing lacrosse in the Chesterfield area. When coming up with an Idea for a capstone project I thought of a need that I could fill in the community. Right away I thought of having a lacrosse clinic for kids.
It worked out perfectly because I love lacrosse and working with children. I’ve been working in the Kidzone at ACAC since 2017 so I have a little experience with kids. The need that I wanted to fill was the lack of experienced coaching in the recreational age levels. In the greater Richmond area there is a lack of high level lacrosse coaches for younger kids.
I have dealt with this first hand. I grew up playing for Chesterfield Youth Lacrosse and we did not have very good coaches. If you want to get better you are almost forced to play for a travel team that has higher level coaches. This is a problem because children are not taught how to play the game correctly at a young age. If you take an average 10 year old lacrosse player from Midlothian, Virginia and one from New York the one from NY is going to be so much better. This is because there are better coaches for youth lacrosse organizations in the north.
To play my part in all of this I wanted to try and help young boys in my area by providing them with a group of high level coaches that will critique their craft. With that being said, we held River Lax on February 15, 2020. It was from approximately 12:00pm to 2:00pm. It was a success, we had 7 kids sign up and 6 show up. All of the kids had a great time and they really enjoyed the clinic competition and games at the end.
While the boys had a blast, We raise a total of $260 which will be donated to the LtN programs in Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia. This money will be able to cover one of the field days in Colombia or Panama or even provide tuition support for a month to four of LtN’s coaches in Nicaragua. After I found this out from Javier Silva, the Director of LtN, I felt very accomplished. It was a lovely experience being able to work with great People at LtN and at River lax .
