Lacrosse - making a positive impact

The Metropolitan Police’s Youth Engagement Team (YET) based in NW London use sport to engage with disadvantaged young people from inner city & low social-economic areas. 

They run and support weekly sporting sessions and multisport holiday camps in Barnet, Brent, & Harrow – with the aim of reducing youth violence and offending, and improving school attainment.  The camps are targeted at young people (aged 9-16) who are either on the periphery of criminal or gang activity, have entered the criminal justice system, or have been identified by their school as struggling with negativity.

Sport has been shown to help young people understand and control their anger and aggression at school, and TLF approved a grant to the Youth Engagement Team to fund equipment and coaching courses, enabling lacrosse to be added to the sports offered from summer 2022.  

Over the last three years rugby had been included in the YET programme, which has had a positive impact in reducing negative behaviour and increasing achievement.  The team now want to see if they can mimic this success by using lacrosse to not only change behaviours but also increase participation in lacrosse.

Camps were organised and run from July 2022 where lacrosse sessions were included, with over 250 young people being given the chance to play the game for the first time.  Feedback from those taking part was very positive. 

PC Ben Eynon who is leading the lacrosse involvement told us:
“On the second day of the Harlesden camp, I ran a watered-down version of Box [lacrosse] in a sports hall, which the kids called ‘hood lacrosse’ and they all absolutely loved it.  In the camp at Barnet, there were quite a few kids there that wanted to do more lacrosse; and at the Harrow camp half of those I spoke to at the end said lacrosse was their highlight of the camp”.

“Moving forward, I now have three schools that we are looking to run lacrosse sessions within the next month or so (one primary, one secondary and one SEN school)”. 

Local lacrosse club the Camden Capybaras are involved in providing a link towards competitive lacrosse, and the England Lacrosse Regional Development Officer Nik Roberts has also been involved in providing guidance & support.

We wish the Metropolitan Police team all the best in using lacrosse for positive community engagement.