Seven years ago, a trip to a lacrosse tournament in Colorado opened Blake Cyboron’s eyes to a new world of possibilities.
A 10-year-old Cyboron, who at the time lived in Castle Rock, Colorado, hadn’t had much exposure to the sport. But once he attended a game with his family, he was hooked. He wanted to know more, and he wanted to be involved.
“After I went to that first game, I went home and just couldn’t get it out of my mind,” Cyboron said. “We bought a couple sticks and started messing around. I tried out for a team and made the team.”
And over the next seven years, Cyboron, now a 17-year-old senior at Lewis Central, has dedicated much time and effort into honing his craft. It also helps that he’s a gifted athlete, also excelling in football and track, running the 200 and 400.
But it’s lacrosse that has turned into not only Cyboron’s favorite sport but also a potential ticket to the next step of his academic and athletic journey. He currently holds offers to play lacrosse in college at Division-II Adams State in Alamosa, Colorado, and NAIA William Penn in Oskaloosa.
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“It’s a lot like any other sport,” Cyboron said. “You go to showcases and tournaments, and there’s college coaches there that recruit you.
“I think I’m going to make a decision soon at the end of the football season. It’s crazy. When I was 10 years old picking it up, I would have never thought that I would get the opportunity to play college lacrosse. It was crazy when I got my first offer.”
Cyboron’s scholarship offers are well earned. He spends roughly eight months of the year fine-tuning his lacrosse skills while balancing school and his other two sports.
He is currently a midfielder for the Omaha Rogue of the Nebraska High School Lacrosse Association (NHSLA) after playing his freshman and sophomore years for the Sarpy County Knights. The Knights didn’t have enough players to form a team after his first two seasons, so they combined with another team to form the Rogue.
The NHSLA is composed of 10 teams — eight from Nebraska and two from Iowa. It has a regular season and postseason to determine a league champion.
Cyboron’s schedule gets busier in the spring when his track and lacrosse commitments intertwine. For lacrosse alone, he’s usually playing one or two games a week with practices in between. He also watches film and hits the practice field throughout the week and tries to get as much rest as possible when the schedule allows.
Compared to more traditional prep sports, lacrosse’s participation numbers aren’t high. Cyboron gets coaching during the season, but when he trains on his own, he gets creative about his practice methods. That might mean studying film from past games or recording his own training sessions.
“I’ll bring (videos) in to my coaches and ask them what would work better or see what I need to fix,” he said. “They’ll help me, then I’ll go back throughout the week and work on it and try to get better. It’s just kind of like a weekly update that I try to do.”
Among the in-season and offseason lacrosse work, football games and practices and track meets and practices, Cyboron has little time to spare.
“We start our season workouts around January,” he said. “My season starts in March. Whenever we’re in-season training, I work with my team, but outside of that, I just have a net at home and rip on the net, watch some videos and work on my game.
“Nobody else has really picked up the sport, so it’s just kind of by myself over here. It is pretty cool. I like doing it myself, personally, because I know what I need to work on. I’ll record myself and watch some videos, so I can see what I need to work on. It just works a lot better for me.”
After years of practice, Cyboron has the skills to be noticed at the college level, and it certainly took time adjusting to the game. He’s always had speed — “I burn kids all the time,” he said — but the technique and understanding of the sport took time to develop. Playing wall ball was a real benefit, a practice of repeatedly throwing a ball against a wall to work on passing, catching and hand-eye coordination.
“A lot of new kids that are just picking it up, they struggle with passing, catching and cradling (a technique used to keep the ball in the pocket of a player’s stick while he runs),” he said. “They just need some work, but wall ball definitely helps there. It’ll get them better.”
He also knows that it takes some time to get used to the nuances of the sport.
“It seems like the more years I’ve been playing, I notice that there are a bunch of kids who are just now starting to pick it up,” he said. “There are a lot of kids that are new to it, starting this year and the last couple of years. I’ve been doing it since I was 10, and there’s a big gap in between.”
As a wide receiver in football and sprinter in track, Cyboron said many of the traits that lead to success in those sports translate well in lacrosse. Speed. Conditioning. Discipline. They’re all big pieces of what it takes to be a successful lacrosse player.
“Track really works on your form, and it helps out in both lacrosse and football,” he said. “Football keeps me conditioned in the offseason for lacrosse.”
Cyboron has put himself in position for a promising future in lacrosse, but it isn’t the only sport where he makes an impact this season. He’s already amassed four catches, 133 receiving yards and a 70-yard touchdown for the Titans’ football team, which is 2-1 following a 31-3 victory over Norwalk Sept. 10.
Seven regular season games remain in Cyboron’s prep football career, and he and his teammates would like to make the 2021 season one to remember.
“Everyone on the team is hoping to get that ring this year,” Cyboron said. “We’ve definitely got the talent there. We just have to bring it all together and make a run for it.”