Jason Levesque is the current head women’s lacrosse coach at DI St. Bonaventure University. He has had multiple coaching stops in his career, including as an assistant for the Canadian Men’s Field Team.
Talking Sixes & More with Jason Levesque
Global Significance
Sixes lacrosse has been in lacrosse news a lot this week. The announcement of World Lacrosse’s new discipline happened Tuesday, and the lacrosse industry was torn on how to react. Those of us with international ties understand how hard other countries are working to grow the game and how beneficial Sixes will be in that growth. As Jason Levesque said during our interview, the eyeballs an Olympic broadcast would create a new wave of potential fans, players, and coaches.
Building a Sixes Roster
Full disclosure: neither of us know exactly what the roster limitations will be, but we do understand that the rosters will be capped and much smaller than the World Games roster of 23.
That said, we dove a little deeper into what types of players we see being beneficial: traditional two-way midfielders, guys who grew up playing more attack but transitioned to D-mid in college (happens a lot), box players.
One unique situation Levesque and I can’t wait to watch play out is Blaze Riorden. He’s a world class field goalie and an exceptional forward in the NLL. This means that if you plan to carry two goalies, which you should, Riorden could be taking runs out of the cage, adding important depth in this new fast-paced style of lacrosse. The main point here is, teams will be made up of generalists, players who can do a little bit of everything (like Jeremy Thompson, Zach Currier, Kyle Harrison).
Becoming a Women’s Coach
With an impressive resume as a men’s coach (Canisius, Alma, Adams State, IMG, Team Canada), what led Jason Levesque to becoming a DI women’s head coach? A chance opportunity while working at the IMG Academy led to Levesque having an increased role helping the women’s teams. Over time, he grew a stronger and deeper appreciation for the women’s game. Then, a familiar friend and mentor, Randy Mearns, brought the vacancy at St. Bonaventure to his attention. It appears Levesque is all in on the women’s game and hopes that others will learn to appreciate it the same way he did.
