The boys varsity lacrosse team has brought in Travis Sanders as their new assistant coach. Sanders has also taken the role of the new Assistant Athletic Director as well as the head coach for the middle school boys lacrosse team.
Sanders was drawn to coach at Trinity because coaching and lacrosse have always been a part of his life. He has 19 years of lacrosse coaching experience and was also a collegiate lacrosse player at Bethel College in Saint Paul. He also played for a post-college men’s lacrosse travel team.
“One of the reasons why I was initially drawn to Trinity was the lacrosse program here, and that’s probably one of the first conversations that I’d had before I took the current role I’m in now as assistant athletic director was to kind of do this combo thing of helping in the athletics department and also then coaching boys lacrosse,” Sanders said.
Sanders has been involved with the boys’ pre-season training to get ready for the upcoming season. According to Sanders, the team has been focused mostly on strength and conditioning.
“Our guys are practicing right now five days a week with no sticks,” Sanders said. “We’re just focused on getting the guys moving and getting stronger and getting in shape for tryouts.”
Sanders hopes his role as the head coach for the middle school boys lacrosse team will allow him to achieve his goals of strengthening the lacrosse program as a whole.
“I’ll be the head coach of the middle school team, getting that going so then that will help feed our varsity program, and hopefully we can even add in a JV program,” Sanders said. “I think there is a really really strong base here in the lacrosse world at Trinity and so I’m really just hoping to bring some of my background and expertise, and then help in any way I can.”
Alongside Sanders, Christopher Newman has also stepped in to be another assistant coach for the boys varsity lacrosse team. Newman said that he sees a bright future for the lacrosse program. He is hoping to be a big part of that and contribute what he can.
“Now the school has really put its weight behind the program and invested in the program by bringing on myself and Coach Sanders,” Newman said. “I see the program, hopefully leveling up and going to new heights because there’s a lot of interest from the players and lots of support from the families.”
Sanders is also taking it upon himself to not only better the athletics from the field, but also behind the scenes, which is where his role as assistant athletic director comes in.
“It was sort of a process of figuring out what are the needs that the school has and what are the skill sets that I have in my professional life, and that was where this combination of coaching and being assistant athletic director came in,” Sanders said. “I’m really just in a learning phase right now of trying to figure out how things are done, learning the Trinity mindset of doing things and what’s important to Trinity.”
Just like his lacrosse and coaching experience, Sanders has sufficient experience in working in the athletics department. Sanders said that at his old university his primary role was being the head lacrosse coach but he also had a secondary role of being a game manager for soccer and other sports as well. On top of that, he had a third role of being in charge of a recruiting plan for all of the varsity sports.
“So I was connected to all these things in athletics so I think that my background in that specifically helps with my role here because it all makes sense to me,” Sanders said.
Players have high praise for the new coaches who have stepped in and made an immediate impact before the season has even started.
“I think that it will help us a lot this season with the addition of two new coaches who have lots of experience in coaching and lacrosse, they’ve been helping us out a lot already during our pre-season workouts,” junior Jordan Acker said.
As the team gets closer to the season, Sanders and Newman are both looking forward to helping the team achieve a winning season.
“We have some real heavy hitters that we have to go up against but at the same time we’ve got the desire and the drive from a lot of the players to excel,” Newman said. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t have a winning season.”
