Hey!
My name is Dave Miller, CEO and Founder of Lacrosse Toss. I thought that maybe you'd like to learn about my journey up to this point. So here it goes…
I am a Wrestling Coach and a father of two awesome, little kids (Jayne, 9 and Myles, 6). My daughter, Jayne, began her journey with the sport of lacrosse 3 years ago ,and my son, Myles, just finished up his first season. Jayne has fallen love with the sport and has really improved over the last year. In the Spring of 2023 Jayne played her first season of club lacrosse with a South Jersey Team called All American AIM. She had a great experience and has a stick in her hand most of the day. Myles spends most of his time on a wrestling mat, but this past spring he had a chance to play lacrosse with our town. Aside from his hatred of wearing a helmet and pads, he started to really enjoy running around and scoring goals!
I own a CrossFit gym and a Wrestling Club. The gym has been in business for 12 years with many members coming through our doors throughout that time. One of our members played Men’s Lacrosse at Johns Hopkins and Rutgers during his college career. He coached the Shawnee High School Boys lacrosse team, in Medford NJ, for many years. The guy loves the sport of lacrosse and told me that I should get a lacrosse stick in Jayne’s hand since she was born. During a brief conversation about shooting accuracy, he told me about the Thompson Target. The Thompson's father, Jerome Thomspon Sr., had made a hole in a piece of wood, barely big enough for a ball to fit, and they would practice shooting on that target. It was at this point that I started to think about recreating this for my kids.
I had seen a game for soccer come up on my feed called SpotKick and thought to myself, Why doesn’t lacrosse have a game that is fun to play, can be played in the backyard, beach or open space, be competitive AND help with aiming, passing and shooting skills? So I went to the nearest piece of paper I had and started to sketch the first concept. The First concept had 3 different sized holes on the board where each one would be worth a different amount of points. I had a cornhole board laying around so I measured and drew it up on the board. My wife came out and said why don’t you make the holes look exactly like the holes on the Lacrosse Shooting Trainer usually placed the front of a goal. I thought this was genius so I scrapped the previous Idea.
I grabbed some some tools and started to cut the first concept of Lacrosse Toss. The center hole of the cornhole board was 6” so I decided the corner targets would be a little bigger at 8” and the 2 side targets a 6” half moon shaped target. Then we started playing and coming up with the rules of the game.
I realized, quickly, that using actual lacrosse balls on a wood target wasn’t the best idea. One reason is that it is very loud every time you miss the hole and hit the board. The other reason is that if you catch an edge of the target, the lacrosse ball would bounce in any direction. I had purchased my daughter a ball made by Swax Lax and tried shooting with that and the result was much better. The ball wouldn’t bounce as far and it wasn’t as loud when making contact with the target. We practiced shooting from different distances and to each of the targets and realized this could be a pretty fun game to play. We assigned a different amount of points to each target and played the game everywhere we could. The backyard and beach is where we tested it out the most. I eventually added a net to the back of the target board to catch the balls as they came through the holes.
Fast forward a few months and I have been working with an engineer/designer to develop the prototype. I’ve also reached out to many suppliers on Alibaba to have custom balls and sticks developed for the game. Check them out!
This has been a pretty exciting process! I believe you will all enjoy playing Lacrosse Toss in the backyard, on the beach, at a tailgate, in between games and at your clubs with family, friends and teammates.
-Dave Miller
Founder & CEO Lacrosse Toss