The Altona Lacrosse Club has hosted the Men’s and Women’s Box National Championship that ran from 08 February 2023 to 12 February 2023. This was the first tournament to include female sides competing in a Box Lacrosse National Tournament. Male and Female Teams competed from Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. A President’s team also participated in the men’s competition.

The standard of play was high and exciting in both the men’s and women’s contests. At the end of the week, it was the two Victorian sides that came out on top after going through the tournament undefeated. For the men, they ran out comfortable winners over South Australia 19 goals to 8. The women had to work much harder to defeat a gallant Western Australia side 12 goals to 9. Greg Mollison was head coach of both sides which is an outstanding achievement. Medals were presented to the winning sides by Natashia Lewer and Jett Lewer in recognition of the incredible work Alan Lewer put in to get this purpose-built facility erected at Altona.

The weather was great all week which made it very comfortable for the spectators. It was certainly hot out on the court however with body crunching blows frequent in both the men and women competitions.

The Altona Lacrosse Club hosted the event and James Bleed, Rod Maher and Danny McGee led a team of volunteers who worked tirelessly to make sure everything ran well and the Tournament was an outstanding success.

The Alan Lewer Box Court was the perfect venue for such high standard games and Altona looks forward to hosting many more box lacrosse games at this purpose-built facility starting with games against a touring Canada Development Team (CANDT) in March. The Canadians will be competing at the 2023 IIJL Commonwealth Cup against three all-star teams from across Australia; wrapping up with the best-of-the-best winner take all final against Australia.

Many of the games were recorded so if people wish to see this exciting form of lacrosse played at a high standard, go to the Australian Lacrosse Network facebook page.