Podcast: How Ralph Nelson created a unique Maine summer league

Waynflete (Maine) High School coach Ralph Nelson, left, joined the "Chasing The Goal" podcast.

On this episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Owen Hart are joined by Waynflete School’s Ralph Nelson.

Nelson is a member of the boys lacrosse coaching staff and serves as the physical education teacher at The Waynflete School in Portland, Maine. He has coached club lacrosse with Team DIRIGO as well as TRUE Lacrosse National.

Nelson graduated from the University of Maine in 2013, where he was a three-time captain of the men’s club lacrosse team, and an All-Conference attackman during his junior and senior years.

This past summer, Nelson embarked on a unique journey to create a competitive and developmental summer league for committed and current Maine lacrosse players.

Watch the full podcast below on YouTube. It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the pod.

Kyle Devitte: I’ll just fill the audience in on the background. I’m (in Maine) on vacation and I can’t help myself. I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m in Maine. I should probably talk to some Maine lacrosse people. We don’t get up here enough to cover the sport.’ So I reached out to the Mainelaxpower account and Coach Nelson responded.

You created a summer league of college guys who are playing in college and college-committed guys in Maine, and you just made it work. Literally, the first thing I thought was, I have to steal that. I want that for New Hampshire. I’m gonna go see this and gonna see how it’s run.

Ralph Nelson: It was something that I had conjured up in October of last year, and I just kind of began putting my feelers out. There was a good handful of guys that I always knew were playing during winter break or putting a game together in the fall. So I touched base with those college guys first, who are just all over the place. They’re active on social media as far as their training, and where they’re playing and getting boys together that want to get a good game in over break.

And so in October, I began stirring the pot a little bit: “Hey, we’re considering putting something together this summer, like a once-a-week championship model gameplay. … We would have a draft. We would put the most competitive game out there possible.

Owen Hart: I think it’s awesome, the buy-in you’ve gotten from everybody, even in the league’s infancy, and Maine’s a huge, sprawling state. I’m sure guys are driving all over to play in this thing. How many teams? How many players? What’s the pool size looking like? 

Ralph Nelson: So at the beginning of the season we actually had too many; we were going to start the season with 88 guys, so I had to get firm commitments from everybody. I’m on the horn, emails, text messages, all that stuff being like, “You’re who we want in the league, but at the same time, I’m gonna take someone that’s gonna be here for five weeks over you, who’s only gonna be here for three.” And that was the trickiest part. So we had to weed out some kids.

@TheKyleDevitte
kyle.devitte@laxjournal.com

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