Nakeie Montgomery takes on the country’s fastest growing sport

  By DIANE XAVIER The Dallas Examiner   In Texas, football is king according to sports enthusiast. In the United States, football shares an audience with basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer, according to a study [...] The post Nakeie Montgomery takes on the country’s fastest growing sport appeared first on Dallas Examiner.

Nakeie Montgomery takes on the country’s fastest growing sport

 

By DIANE XAVIER
The Dallas Examiner

 

In Texas, football is king according to sports enthusiast. In the United States, football shares an audience with basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer, according to a study conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

However, there’s another sport that has taken a back seat for centuries that is now seeing a rapid rise in popularity by youth and young adults – lacrosse. The game is the fastest growing sport in the country, with 97 colleges teams and more than 36,000 college students playing the game, according to the NCAA.

Lacrosse is a team sport played with a ball and stick with a net at the end, where players use the net to carry, pass, catch and shoot the ball into a goal to score.

Known as the fastest game on two feet or as “hockey on feet,” lacrosse is also considered America’s first and oldest sport. Played by Native Americans as early as the 12th century, it was often used to settle tribal disputes.

The sport is now available to youth throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, with multiple lacrosse teams in each age group.

Oak Cliff native Nakeie Montgomery, a rookie on the Redwoods Lacrosse Club for the Premier Lacrosse League, said he fell in love with the game as a child when he attended St. Philip’s School and Community Center in South Dallas.

“One day after school at St. Philip’s when I was in third grade, I was hanging out with my friend, Preston Randolph, who was in fourth grade who told me that he was going to lacrosse practice. And I was like, ‘What’s that?’” Montgomery questioned. “I ended up going with him to practice and just fell in love with it and the rest is history.”

Montgomery left St. Philip’s in third grade. His mother, realizing how passionate he was about the game, moved him and his sister to Plano so her son could continue playing lacrosse. However, his sister continued going to the private school until she graduated the sixth grade.

“Lacrosse isn’t found everywhere in Dallas,” Montgomery said. “I live in Oak Cliff in South Dallas, so obviously lacrosse isn’t super prevalent in the South and isn’t found everywhere in Dallas. So, for me to continue playing at a high level, in fifth grade we moved out to Plano for fifth and sixth grade. Then, I played out there and then finally when I was in seventh grade, attended the Episcopal School of Dallas.”

He loves sports so much that he dedicated himself to the game.

“When I started playing, I wasn’t very good, but I really liked it so I just kept working and I still played football,” he said. “I actually stopped playing basketball once I started playing lacrosse.”

Montgomery was a four-year lacrosse letterwinner at the Episcopal school and three-time high school All-American. He graduated in 2017 and earned an academic scholarship to Duke University where he was a midfielder in lacrosse and a running back in football.

He excelled in the sport in college and earned numerous awards and achievements. He was named to the 2021 and 2022 All-ACC team, 2021 Inside Lacrosse All-America first team and was the 2021 Duke Male Senior Student-Athlete of the Year.

He graduated from Duke in 2021 with a major in political economics, a certificate in innovation entrepreneurship and a minor in visual media studies.

Afterward, he was the 19th pick in the 2022 Premier Lacrosse League draft in the third round to the Redwoods Lacrosse Club. The PLL started in 2018 and is a professional American field lacrosse league founded by professional lacrosse players and brothers, Mike and Paul Rabil.

Montgomery was also invited to try out and participate in this year’s Dallas Cowboys rookie camp as a running back on the special teams and offensive personnel. He said the Cowboys invited him after he participated in Duke pro day.

“It was the coolest thing ever,” he said. “They currently have seven or eight running backs. And so, they basically said I’m there. I’m in the picture.”

Though he didn’t make the squad, Montgomery was excited about the potential the Cowboys saw in him. But he was more excited about the potential the lacrosse league saw in him. He said he felt lucky to play lacrosse and be a midfielder in a game he loved playing as he was growing up.

“To be honest, there’s 152 people who get to play lacrosse every weekend after college right now with eight teams,” he said. “So, I’m just grateful to be one of those 152 to play the sport I love. So that’s obviously a big reason. But another reason obviously, I’m just young. It was right after school. So, my job started right after school.”

PLL currently has eight teams and plays in 12 different cities throughout the season. It recently played at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, Dallas Cowboys Headquarters, on July 30 and July 31.

Each team has 26 players, and no team is tied to a certain city or geographic region but instead the teams tour 12 different major metropolitan areas. The season lasts 14 weeks.

As the league grows, Montgomery hopes its popularity will continue to grow as well.

“This league has health benefits, higher pay and new investors,” Montgomery said. “NBA player Kevin Durant recently invested in the league which is super cool. It is a fun and awesome sport, and the league is bringing more exposure to us and … at the end of the day, we are just trying to keep growing the game.

“The lacrosse community is so tight-knit, and we all care and try to drive this sport and get it to the mainstreams.”

Montgomery encouraged young athletes, especially African American youth, to consider trying lacrosse as a sport to play.

“It’s a fast sport, it’s a players game and the money is good for playing,” he said. “The fact about the game is that it is a fun game and if people see it, they’ll be into it and they’ll want to do it. … If people keep seeing this game, they’re gonna be like ‘This game is cool’ and ask, ‘What is this?’”

During his free time, Montgomery works with several youth and provides private lacrosse lessons and training. Some of the areas he provides private lessons is in Oak Cliff.

“I love coaching kids and giving private lessons and working with kids three or four times a week and also working with St. Philip’s school and Bridge Lacrosse,” he said.

Bridge Lacrosse is a sports-based youth development non-profit serving the urban communities of North Texas whose mission is to provide urban communities and underserved communities the opportunity to be engaged in lacrosse while also focusing on youth development and afterschool and summer programming.

Currently, the Redwoods Lacrosse Club have clinched the playoffs and the postseason is right around the corner.

 

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