By Brian Shaw | [email protected]

Carrying inside its stick the hopes of a team that won four straight games to capture a state title, the Bingham Miners girls lacrosse team goes into the 2022 season with the aim of flinging the ball back to that promised land.

“We are very excited for this season,” said Bingham head coach Sydney Christensen, whose team competed in what was the first year that girls lacrosse was recognized and officially sanctioned by the Utah High School Activities Association.

Therefore, all participating schools last year were grouped into three separate divisions rather than regions, and Bingham’s was placed into Division C for girls lacrosse only.

This year marks the first year that all Utah high schools will be grouped into the respective regions in which they play their other sports.

That means that going into the 2022 season the Miners will be in Class 6A Region 3. They opened their season on Wednesday, March 22 at Copper Hills, winning in decisive fashion with a score of 16-3.

“The girls came together yesterday and worked as a team,” Christensen said. “They were communicating what needed to happen, connecting their passes, and being smart with their shots.”

The coach added that it’s really hard to single out any one specific player for Bingham to look out for on the field this season, but when the Miners play as a team they are going to be hard to contain.

“We have very talented girls that, put together, are unstoppable! It’s hard to pick out specific players because of the amount of talent,” added the coach. “But, some of my returning contenders are Ashlyn Smith, Afton Wilson, Kaycee Ellison, Brenna Miller, Addison Hatch and Sophie Curtis. Some new players to my varsity that are already showing that they are a force to be reckoned with are Bailey James, Taylor Ford, Sophie Grizzle and Norah Davis.”

Region 3 will be no cakewalk in girls lacrosse for the defending state champions, a fact that the coach is acutely aware of. “We will definitely have some tough teams in our region,” said Christensen. “Mountain Ridge, Herriman, and Riverton are all going to be tough competitors, but if we play like we did last night [at Copper Hills] they will be close, good games.”

Boys Lacrosse

The Miners boys started their first-ever Region 3 campaign on March 22 as well, winning 6-5 over Copper Hills in a battle. The two teams also met last year, with Bingham taking a convincing win by the score of 13-0.

On the boys' side, Bingham was also quite adept at slinging the ball in 2021. During what was also their inaugural season in the sport of lacrosse, the Miners went 12-3 overall in Division A.

One of the more impressive statistics was that the Miners boys scored 10 or more points in 11 of those 15 regular season games.

They also had five shutouts in those 15 games before falling in the first round of the Division A state tournament at Davis in a back-and-forth 12-9 loss.

The Miners boys are four games into their current season, sitting at 1-3 overall after some tough losses to open the season: at Pleasant Grove 4-9; at Bountiful 7-8 in overtime; and in Bingham’s home opener against American Fork 2-11.

Bingham boasts 10 seniors and 11 juniors on its roster, which is among the largest in the state. A player to watch on the team is junior Nicolas Anderson, who scored four goals last year in just one game against rival Herriman. Another is senior Jaxon Butterfield who also had a huge game last year against Herriman, flinging in two goals and tossing over three assists.

Now that all Utah high school teams participating in lacrosse are classified into the same regions as in other sports — save for West — there is still a lot of lacrosse left to be played under the boys' head coach Brent Everill, who has a 12-6 career record at the school.