When John Tomasi first accepted a job as a counselor at Auburn Mountainview High School, he had no idea he’d be called into duty as a coach as well.

According to Tomasi, he was approached by a parent at his first booster club meeting after mentioning that he had coached lacrosse in Utah before moving to Washington.

“She said, ‘Oh, my daughter would love to play lacrosse,’ ” Tomasi said. “So I filed the paperwork, and we became a school-sponsored club sport.”

Now, three years into the job, Tomasi is in charge of laying the foundation for what he hopes will become a lasting tradition of lacrosse in the Auburn School District.

Tomasi, who is originally from Upstate New York, where lacrosse is a common varsity sport at high schools, said he was surprised by how little people knew about the sport when he moved here.

“Maybe they had seen it on TV,” Tomasi said. “Or they had relatives from other areas who were familiar with it. Or they had seen movies like ‘American Pie’ that had lacrosse in it.”

Although Western Washington boasts a few schools with programs, including Bellevue, Tahoma and Puyallup, most of the young athletes who turned out that first year were unfamiliar with the sport, which originated as a war game between tribes of the Iroquois Indian nations.

“It’s like a cross between basketball and soccer,” Tomasi said of the sport.

In lacrosse, 12 players per side use lacrosse sticks, also called a “crosse” to catch, pass and carry a small rubber ball and score goals by shooting the ball into an opponent’s net.

“Usually (the learning curve is) really steep,” Tomasi said. “It takes a lot of skills and drills stuff, because you want the basics of cradling, catching, throwing and picking up ground balls.

“It takes a couple of games before they start to understand it,” he added. “And then it’s just a question of learning the skills and getting game experience.”

Originally the Auburn squad, which is sanctioned as a club sport at Auburn Mountainview, but open to players from all three Auburn school, consisted of 15 or 16 girls, Tomasi said.

Now Tomasi said the squad is deep enough to field junior varsity and varsity squads.

“We’re routinely going up against schools with players who have five or six years of experience,” Tomasi said. “Here we’ve got two or three years. Next year will be the first girls going for four years. This will be a learning year for everybody, and hopefully we’re competitive. But next year we should be strong competitively.”

Tomasi said he hopes area athletes will continue to broaden their horizon and turn out for the sport.

“Players just need a willingness to learn and try a different sport,” Tomasi said. “And I’m growing a program, so we’re trying to correct mistakes, we’re not yelling at them as much. Overall it’s about building a program, so we’re trying to combine fun, learning and team building.”

Abby Waldo, a junior at Auburn Mountainview, has been on the team since the beginning.

“I thought it was cool when I found out about the team,” she said. “It was a new sport for me.”

Waldo, who also plays soccer, said the learning curve for the sport was challenging at first.

“The first year was pretty hard to learn the stick-eye coordination,” she said. “Otherwise, the play was like soccer.”

Waldo, like the rest of the squad, practices two hours a day, five days a week, and encourages other girls to try their hands at lacrosse.

“I’d tell them it’s fun and it’s something new,” she said.

“It’s a new opportunity to play and compete,” Tomasi added. “Eventually if you like it and get good at it, it could be an avenue for colleges. It just opens up so many opportunities.”

“It’s something that you can pick up, have fun and learn to love.”