There are a growing number of teams in Columbus, Cincinnati and Springfield, but not in Dayton.

Organizers of the Dayton Lacrosse Club are hoping to plant some seeds this fall to help the youth programs grow.

They are having an informational roadshow in the meeting room at the Centerville Library, 111 W. Spring Valley Road, from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. Rules, equipment, coaching, officiating, costs and how to sign up for teams will be covered.

Following the introduction to the basics, there will be demonstrations and drills at nearby Stubbs Park.

Several high school students, both male and female, attended an introductory session on a cold, wet October morning.

With the rain alternating between a drizzle and a downpour, they learned how to throw and scoop a rubber ball the size and hardness of a baseball with a lacrosse stick, a 30-inch metal stick with a leather-mesh pocket at one end.

Lacrosse, a game originally played as training for warfare by American Indians and later adapted by the French Canadians, is by some accounts the fastest growing sport in Ohio.

"The greatest challenge is first getting kids exposed to the game,"said Dayton Lacrosse Club organizer John Reed of Oakwood. "Our personal experience has been that once a kid experiences the thrill of playing an actual game, he or she is hooked."

The greatest asset of the game is its pure excitement, which combines the best elements of hockey and football.

The best way to describe the men's game is that it is similar to hockey, except played on a football/soccer-size field and without skates.

Protective equipment from the waist-up is required, and the game, while full-contact, does not have the indiscriminate hitting of a football game.

Reed's son, Eric, a freshman at the Miami Valley School in Washington Twp., has played lacrosse for nearly six years. He became interested in the sport when his family lived in Virginia.

Daniel Vore, 15, a freshman at Centerville High School, also learned the sport in Virginia where the game is very popular and now both boys find it difficult to find others with whom they can play.

Vore's mother, Patti Jo, began asking questions when her family moved to the Dayton area last year. She discovered that John Reed was trying to organize a high school-age team.

"The schools weren't real helpful in advertising for us, and being self-supporting we didn't have the finances to advertise. So we did posters and put the word out. By the end of July, we had 13 high school-age young men coming to our clinic that were practices for what we hoped would be a high school team," she said.

"The problem was that to be a team you needed to have full gear to play, but no one wanted to invest in the gear until they were sure we had a team. Kind of like the chicken and the egg thing, so we closed out our clinic in July for the summer and picked up our endeavors in August."

John Horning, who owns Velocity Lacrosse and Sports in Mason, ran the Oct. 26 lacrosse clinic on the grounds of the Kettering Recreation Complex.

He said that there are 15 boys lacrosse teams in operation in the Cincinnati area. His assistant, Sean Murphy, a coach at McAuley an all-girls Catholic high school in Cincinnati, said there were an equal number of girls teams.

If the Dayton Lacrosse Club can get enough high school boys to commit to a team by Dec. 15, it will be coached by Harry Calcut, a retired Air Force colonel who lives in Dayton and has played lacrosse since he attended the Air Force Academy Prep School in 1968.

"I feel an obligation to give something back to a sport that I've enjoyed for over 30 years. Lacrosse is an excellent sport for people who have a lot of physical dexterity, but aren't big enough to play football or basketball," he said.

Anyone interested in learning more about the Dayton Lacrosse Club can call John Reed at 395-1915 or e-mail john.reed@dinslaw.com, or call Patti Jo Vore at 886-2581 or e-mail pjx2@aol.com.