The Moose Jaw Kinsmen Lacrosse Association will be hitting the court in a different league when they start the 2018 season.

Moose Jaw’s association, along with four other communities, have come together to form the South Saskatchewan Lacrosse League, which will open its inaugural season this spring.

“We’re pretty excited, we’ve been planning on this for a while now, so it’s nice to see it all come together and everyone has joined in and is united to go ahead with it,” said Carrie Johnson with MJKLAX, who will serve as president of the newly formed SSLL.

For the past decade, Moose Jaw has played in the Queen City Box Lacrosse League against teams from Regina. Weyburn and Estevan have joined that league over the past few seasons, while Swift Current has traditionally played games in a intra-provincial league with teams out of Alberta.

All five associations will now play under the SSLL with age divisions ranging from novice to midget.

“There’s been lots of growth in lacrosse in the province, particularly in the south area,” said Bridget Pottle, executive director of the Saskatchewan Lacrosse Association. “This will provide rural areas in southern Saskatchewan that might not be large enough for an association, but have teams that play in this league.”

The sport of lacrosse was given a major boost when the National Lacrosse League came to town with the Saskatchewan Rush setting up shop in Saskatoon.

With the sport growing and the desire to see that growth continue is what led to the formation of the SSLL.

“For the growth of the game and player development, this will be huge,” said Johnson. “We don’t want to just be the sport that feeds the other big sports during their offseason, we want to be the sport that everyone wants to play.

“Our main focus will be growing the game in the rural areas, it will be tough for sure for the next teams that come in to compete, but we have to look at the bigger picture and that’s continuing to grow the game.”

Registration is open right now to play lacrosse, click here for more details.