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outh lacrosse in “football country,” Texas, was virtually nonexistent when Owen Seebold was born. But at 3 years old, Seebold started attending practice with his dad, former Syracuse national champion Bob Seebold, who was coaching a Highland Park High School club team.

But Bob didn’t want his son, or others interested in lacrosse, to only have the opportunity to practice their stick work as high schoolers.

“We were either going to have to move or start lacrosse down here,” Bob said.

So lacrosse took off in the Highland Park community on the north side of Dallas. Bob’s blueprint spread to other towns and metropolitan cities across the state, with Austin and Houston becoming youth lacrosse hubs despite the sport still being considered club status at the high school level. Simultaneously, Seebold’s skills evolved in his dad’s program, helping him become the Class of 2017’s seventh-best attackman, per Inside Lacrosse, and eventually, a captain in his last year at SU.

It took several years for Bob’s vision to come into fruition. By the time Seebold was in first grade, Bob had created six youth teams, and the league had the players for six more the next year. Now, the Highland Park program has roughly 300 kids on teams ranging from first graders to high schoolers, according to Rich Moses, who coached Seebold in middle school.

“It just exploded down here — parents love it and kids love it,” Bob said. “Who doesn’t love running around hitting someone with a stick?”

Lacrosse still had to compete with Highland Park’s more popular sports like football and basketball. Seebold started to ask his friends on the football team to try lacrosse, and Bob talked to kids and parents to spread the word.

“My dad really inspired kids to pick up a stick and make it something they could build on athletically,” Seebold said. “Those were the best memories I had with lacrosse. It was just because I was with my dad and he was trying to build this thing.”

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After graduating from Syracuse, Bob played for a lacrosse club in Dallas. Two years after Highland Park’s program was up and running, one of Bob’s former club teammates, Johnny Marano, started a youth program while also coaching high school. The youth program allowed Marano and Bob to develop players who would eventually play under them in high school rather than teaching fundamentals once they were already in ninth grade.

Lacrosse was still in full swing in the months when there wasn’t fall youth football. It also grew more popular than Little League in Highland Park as kids “would rather have action or contact” instead of standing around on the baseball field, Bob said.

But for players like Seebold who had played lacrosse since first grade, North Texas’ lacrosse competition at the time was still not “on par” with youth programs on the East Coast, Marano said. Marano, who had created a team in the Castle Hills neighborhood, also wanted his son to play stronger competition, inviting Seebold and a few of his teammates from Highland Park to compete with his team on a trip to Long Island when Seebold was in fourth grade.

In the group’s first trip together, it recorded four straight wins. Seebold said he and the team used their athletic ability to keep up with the Long Island competition.

“There was no one in Long Island better than him,” Marano said.

Seebold and the team’s success led to the birth of C2C Lacrosse, a North Texas travel lacrosse program founded by Bob and Marano. The following year, C2C went to Hofstra University, where Seebold “lit the place on fire” in a win over Team Huntington Lacrosse from Long Island, Marano said.

Owen Seebold, shown on the left, was undersized until his junior year. But his youth lacrosse background helped him still dominate on the field. Courtesy of Bob Seebold

With Seebold at the forefront, Highland Park didn’t drop a single North Texas championship game in sixth, seventh or eight grade. Moses said Seebold was “basically unstoppable,” with his stick skills refined from years of Highland Park youth lacrosse.

Throughout high school, Seebold continued to play under Marano in the C2C program and with the Highland Park High School club team. In ninth grade, Seebold traveled to Baltimore with C2C for the program’s first college recruiting tournament.

Seebold dominated again, and then-Syracuse assistant coach Lelan Rogers told Moses he “definitely wanted” Seebold at SU. Seebold said Syracuse “was always in the back of his mind,” as he had been decked out in his father’s old jersey since he was a kid, but that tournament solidified his spot at Bob’s alma mater.

Seebold didn’t reach his current 6-foot-1 frame until he was a junior in high school. Still, the skills he refined through his dad’s youth lacrosse programs continued to benefit him after he grew.

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After youth lacrosse practices, Seebold went home and watched YouTube highlights of the Syracuse players he had plastered on his wall, like the Powell brothers and Kenny Nims. On weekends he watched those players on television, including his current coach Gary Gait, who was playing professionally at the time.

After school Seebold immediately headed to his backyard to practice shooting and dodging with his lacrosse net. He tried to emulate the moves from the players he watched toward his own game, and would try those moves against his teammates once he went with Bob to the field.

For some time, the Seebolds had one of the Highland Park area’s only houses with a goal in their backyard. But as Bob’s vision embraced the community, Moses said goals started to appear in “hundreds” of homes throughout the town that has less than 10,000 residents.

“Bob was one of the architects of youth lacrosse in Texas,” Moses said. “Kudos to the Seebold family, and to Owen, for getting Texas lacrosse on the map.”

Photo courtesy of SU Athletics

Published on February 9, 2022 at 9:58 pm

Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu