SEQUIM –– Youth lacrosse, the city’s centennial and regional economic development were brought up to the City Council when some 30 people attended a special town hall-style session this week.
With a light agenda, the council opened up the floor Monday night for anyone who wanted to discuss city issues.
Danielle Patterson, coach of the North Olympic Peninsula Mountaineers girls lacrosse team, said her team had to make an impromptu move to play a game at Stevens Middle School in Port Angeles after her club was exiled from the Albert Haller Playfields at Carrie Blake Park.
“It’s the best field on the Olympic Peninsula,” Patterson said of the Carrie Blake facilities with a cadre of young lacrosse team members at her back.
Craig Stevenson, president of Sequim Family Advocates, the group formed to help establish the fields, said the Mountaineers approached him earlier this month looking for a place to play.
With soccer on the Haller fields most Saturdays, and its proximity to the Olympic Discovery Trail, Stevenson said they felt it would be best to hold lacrosse matches on their own fields.
“Haller’s a very busy place on Saturdays,” Stevenson said.
Patterson said the lacrosse teams are risking injuries by playing on other area fields that have rough surfaces.
“For games, we need a safe place and a show place,” Patterson said.
Stevenson said they thought they had helped find the lacrosse crew a home on the Greywolf field.
“I genuinely look forward to lacrosse growing here,” he said. “It’s a great game. I thought we had helped out.”
PA mayor
Also Monday, Port Angeles Mayor Cherie Kidd greeted the council to cheer on the city’s centennial celebration.
“Go get ’em, Sequim,” she said.
Mayor Kidd remembered visiting her grandparents’ farm on Sequim’s west side as a child; her grandfather giving her the occasional playful squirt in the face with milk from a cow’s udder.
She swapped pins from last year’s Port Angeles sesquicentennial for a Sequim centennial pin before pledging an appearance at the July 5 “Street Dance of the Century” that will be held downtown.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
