For generations, the lacrosse community has proudly called our sport “the medicine game.” We repeat the phrase at banquets, stitch it onto pinnies, and teach it to our youth players. But what happens when a community takes that foundational, sacred concept and puts it to work in an urban landscape navigating gun violence, economic disparities, and systemic mental health challenges?
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, the medicine game isn’t just a traditional homage—it’s a literal blueprint for community survival, youth development, and inclusive design.
A recent conversation between Don Wilson and Eric Schell shed light on how the sport is evolving in emerging communities. Ultimately, their dialogue revealed a powerful truth: when passion meets accessible technology, we can democratize lacrosse, accelerate “Lax IQ,” and build highly competitive teams in areas the sport historically left behind.
The Spark: From Greenwich to Bridgeport
The story of Bridgeport Youth Lacrosse started where so many lacrosse stories do: the high-powered, resource-heavy landscape of Fairfield County. Don Wilson was driving his son seven days a week from Bridgeport to the prestigious Brunswick School in Greenwich. Watching his son dive into the sport, Don began researching its history, discovering the stories of Jim Brown, the Native American roots of the game, and its traditional purpose as a vehicle for healing.
The contrast between the two neighboring cities was stark. Greenwich had manicured turf and endless resources; Bridgeport was battling systemic trauma. Don realized the sport itself could be the intervention Bridgeport’s youth needed.
Don Wilson: “When I heard the medicine game and healing, that clicked with me and resonated with me so powerfully. Just because we could use sports… as a vehicle to heal our community, to build bridges, to break down barriers, all of those kind of things… Why can’t we start a program in Bridgeport, Connecticut?”
Seventeen years later, Don’s program has expanded into the Bridgeport Sports Academy. By leveraging partnerships with local basketball legends like Charles Smith, John Bagley, and Wes Matthews, the academy provides a year-round safe haven through lacrosse, flag football, basketball, and track.
The Emerging Market Challenge: Overcoming the “Volunteer Gap”
One of the steepest hurdles for urban and non-traditional lacrosse expansion is the coaching bottleneck. Elite hotbeds boast a deep bench of lacrosse-alumni parents ready to pick up a whistle and teach complex defensive slides or look-off passes. Emerging communities, however, frequently rely on passionate volunteer parents who have coached soccer or basketball but have never held a crosse themselves.
When a program relies on volunteers who are learning the sport alongside the kids, standardizing instruction is incredibly difficult. This is exactly the problem Eric Schell set out to solve with Lacrosse Lab.
By moving away from rigid, static paper playbooks and creating an accessible, digital environment, software acts as an equalizer for under-resourced programs. It allows a volunteer coach to pull up an animated, 3D drill right on their phone, instantly understanding spacing and timing without needing a Division I pedigree.
| Traditional Development Barriers | Software-Enabled Solutions |
| The “Volunteer Gap”: Coaches learning lacrosse rules and strategies on the fly. | Visual Literacy: 3D animated playbooks that instantly map out spacing and mechanics visually. |
| Wasted Turf Time: Explaining complex drills on whiteboards during expensive field rentals. | Pre-Practice Prep: Dripping practice frameworks directly to players’ phones days beforehand. |
| Gated Knowledge: Elite strategic playbooks restricted to exclusive, high-cost club systems. | Democratized Strategy: Open-access community playbooks sharing proven offensive and defensive setups. |
Building “Lax IQ” at Home to Maximize Reps on the Turf
To compete with elite club teams who play year-round, emerging programs have to maximize every single second of field time. You cannot waste 20 minutes of a one-hour field rental standing in a circle, drawing on a whiteboard while kids freeze in the wind.
Digital platforms allow coaches to send animated plays and practice structures to a player’s phone days before they step onto the turf, shifting conceptual learning from the field to the home. As Eric Schell explains, the goal isn’t to over-program the kids, but to give them a baseline framework so they can play freely:
Eric Schell: “The goal of our platform is to kind of get you out of having to point and tell the basic movements of the play, because the real learning is going to happen on the field. The way that you’re going to learn how to do that is… [knowing] the basics of the expectations and the reads that you want to follow, and get out on the field and start putting it into practice.”
Don immediately recognized this as the missing link for developing competitive urban athletes. For Don, teaching the mechanical “moves” of lacrosse is only half the battle; the real equalizer is mastering the concepts.
Don Wilson: “Teaching the IQ is going to be critical for our players moving forward. Because you could show them the moves and everything like that, but then do they understand the concepts? Why am I fading? Why am I drifting? What does it mean? Teaching the IQ piece is going to be critical.”
Software, like Lacrosse Lab handles the “what” and the “where” before practice even starts, coaches can spend their limited field time focusing on the “how”—running high-energy, high-rep drills that build genuine muscle memory and game-speed instincts.
Radical Inclusion: Redefining the Sideline
Beyond playbook mechanics, Bridgeport is collaborating with institutions like Yale University and UMass Amherst to pioneer a model of inclusive design in urban sports—proving that a team’s competitive footprint relies on more than just the starting lineup.
Under an inclusive design framework, every child in the neighborhood has a critical role in the team’s success, regardless of physical or cognitive ability. Don paints a vivid picture of how tech and sports analytics can completely redefine a sideline:
Don Wilson: “When we say inclusive, we mean, how do we design programs for everybody, meaning even a kid in a wheelchair. You can get a kid in a wheelchair to take stats of a superstar athlete, and he’s part of the team, feels like he’s contributing. That kid becomes great, feels good that now ‘I don’t have to really compete with my physical body, but I could use my brain.’ There are lots of places for lots of people.”
By connecting sports analytics to their “Summer of STEM” initiatives, Bridgeport is teaching youth that lacrosse leadership isn’t solely defined by physical prowess—it’s driven by strategy, data, and intellect.
This holistic approach has caught the attention of the medical sector. Bridgeport has partnered with local healthcare networks like Saint Vincent Hospital, establishing a direct referral system where community health centers connect youth to the sports academy for comprehensive wellness and mental resilience.
The Blueprint for the Broader Lacrosse Community
Bridgeport’s 17-year journey proves that growing the game in emerging communities shouldn’t be about trying to copy-paste an expensive country-club model into an urban environment. It’s about adapting the sport to meet the immediate, real-world needs of the neighborhood, and using modern digital tools to bridge the resource gap.
If we want to truly scale lacrosse across the United States, our community needs to stop viewing urban programs as charity cases, and start viewing them as innovation hubs. Leaders like Don Wilson and creators like Eric Schell are showing us the future: a sport where tech levels the playing field, inclusive design welcomes every child, and the ancient medicine game continues to heal, unite, and elevate.
Meet the Speakers
Don Wilson
Founder & Executive Director | Bridgeport Youth Lacrosse
Introduced to lacrosse through his son’s attendance at the Brunswick School, Don was deeply moved by the sport’s Native American heritage as a vehicle for healing. In 2006, he founded BYL to provide a safe, transformative sanctuary for Bridgeport youth facing systemic economic and safety challenges. Over 17 years, he expanded it into a year-round Sports Academy serving 1,000+ athletes with academic support, healthcare integration, and career pathways.
Eric Schell
Co-Founder & CEO | Labrador Sports
A former NCAA Division I and Division III collegiate midfielder, Eric launched Lacrosse Lab in 2018 out of frustration with static paper playbooks that wasted valuable turf time during freezing practices. His platform provides animated playbooks that allow volunteer coaches and youth players to master strategy easily. He actively coaches youth club lacrosse, championing player autonomy and democratizing elite tactical knowledge for emerging programs nationwide.