Squinting into the bright October sun, 19-year-old goalie Austen Doster wasn’t thinking about how he and his Fontbonne University lacrosse teammates were making history.

His only concern was the Wittenberg University attackers barreling down the field toward him. Suddenly, one of the opposing midfielders, carefully cradling the ball in his stick, came streaking in for a shot. With cat-like quickness, Doster corralled the ball in the netting of his own stick and fired it out to Tim Rocklage, a midfielder from Minnesota. The Fontbonne Griffins went on to win that game 11-7 as part of the ATG Super Turf Fall Face-Off, held just outside of St. Louis in Fenton, Mo., marking the first lacrosse game in Fontbonne sporting history.

That tourney last fall — an off-season tune-up for the men’s and women’s teams — was the beginning of a historical journey that took another big step forward this year when Fontbonne fielded the only NCAA-sanctioned varsity lacrosse teams in Missouri. Up to now, lacrosse has been a club sport in the state’s colleges and universities. In fact, just to find sanctioned Division III competition, the Fontbonne teams are racking up the miles traveling to Ohio, Virginia, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Kansas. Home contests, mostly against local club teams, are played in the newly renovated Centenne Stadium at Clayton’s Gay Field.

“Lacrosse is bringing a lot of energy to the athletic program and to the university,” says Nick Silva, men’s lacrosse coach and admissions counselor. “We’ve added a lot of diversity to the campus with students coming from across the country to attend school here and play lacrosse.”

One of those students is Doster, a sports management major from El Cajon, Calif. “I think this is exciting because we’re (the lacrosse team) new to the region and it puts our school in the spotlight,” he says. “It’s going to attract a lot of attention.”

For the uninitiated, lacrosse can best be described as a blend of sports. It involves a fair amount of contact, it requires amazing speed and endurance like soccer, and it relies on defensive and offensive schemes akin to basketball. Men’s teams field 10 players —women’s teams 12 — and there are goals at each end of the field. Using a stick with netting attached to the end of it, called the “crosse,” players advance a hard rubber ball trying to score goals.

So, will this sport — which is traditionally associated with the East Coast, but has also seen exploding popularity on the West Coast — capture the interest of Midwesterners? Chelsea Sickmann believes so, and she should know.

“It’s such a competitive sport that once people come out to watch a game, they’ll be addicted. It’s really got something for everybody,” says the 19-year-old Sickmann, an all-American from St. Louis who’s a captain on the women’s team.

And while Sickmann is a local product, many players, particularly on the men’s team, are from out of town. In fact, 19 of the 37 men on the team are from other states, including Texas, California, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. The strength of the university, the newness of the program and persistent recruiting were prime factors in building the teams.

“Networking, establishing relationships and constantly following up with players and coaches was key,” says Silva, a former all-conference lacrosse player with NCAA Division 1 Manhattan College in New York City. “I believe there’s an entire country of kids who want to go away to college at a school where they’ll feel at home and where they can get in on the ground floor of a really exciting athletic program.”

Defenseman Jake Connerly, a freshman biology major from Rowlett, Texas, is another believer that the program will take off locally. “The speed of this sport will surprise a lot of people, and it’s not as scripted as football. We’re always thinking on our feet.”

Connerly was attracted to Fontbonne for its academic reputation and small class sizes. He says it makes a “great environment for learning.” He also thinks the local area has a lot to offer, but that it’s “too cold.”

Unfamiliarity with the weather wasn’t a big issue for women’s coach and assistant athletic director Erin Odegard, who says local recruiting was a priority — and a challenge.

“For years, any local students interested in lacrosse have been forced to look at the coasts if they wanted to play in the NCAA,” says Odegard, a New Jersey native who played lacrosse at Castleton State College in Vermont and who has coached lacrosse in that state and Massachusetts, as well as in England. “Now, I’m happy to say, Fontbonne is building a solid reputation in the lacrosse world and it can only get better. I think lacrosse is just a great example of Fontbonne being willing to lead by example — it’s the university being responsive to the needs and interests of today’s college student, whether it’s in new academic programs, student activities or athletics.”

Being out front, breaking ground, charting a course — however it’s described, the significance of the lacrosse program’s inaugural season is not entirely lost on the players.

“When I pictured myself being part of a first-year team, I realized the potential involved,” says 19-year-old Houston, Texas, native Emilia Lubrano, also a captain on the team. The business major says she knows that what the team does now will begin to establish the lacrosse program’s foundation for years to come.

And, she proudly points out that the team’s motto for the season is, in fact, “Making History.”