Jarret Eyben was just 13 years old when he won a bronze medal as part of the Zone 7 lacrosse team at the Alberta Summer Games.
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Now, the Vermilion native is the head coach of the zone entry in this year’s Summer Games, which run next week in Strathcona County. The lacrosse tournament is scheduled for July 17-19 at Ardrossan.
Eyben, now 27, believes the same approach applies today as when he and his zone teammates reached the medal podium in 2012 at Lethbridge.
“The biggest thing for everyone is to just enjoy it,” he said last Saturday at Vermilion Stadium as his U15 players practised and were photographed in their new Zone 7 jerseys and shorts.
“We’re all here to win, but we’re all here to have fun at the same time. You’ve just got to find that happy medium.”
Eyben had many happy memories while growing up in Vermilion and playing competitive lacrosse with successful Roar teams.
“I played since Grade 2,” he said. “We played some good lacrosse. We went to provincials every year — four gold medals (and) silver — from U13, U15, U17, all the way through. Played in the Summer Games and we got bronze, when I played.”
Eyben has been active as a coach with his hometown lacrosse association. He stepped back, at least partially, this summer because he became a first-time dad just as the season began, when his wife Merkayle gave birth to their daughter Charlie, now three-and-a-half months old.
“I was going to start doing the U15 Vermilion team,” he said. “But some life things changed. I had a newborn and had to prioritize that. But I was able to make this (Summer Games position) work.”
Just a couple of weekends ago, Eyben assisted with coaching duties for the Vermilion-Wainwright Roar-Wolfpack team that earned silver in the Wheatland Lacrosse Association’s U17 playoffs.
“At the year-end tournament, I did help out the Vermilion U17 team for that weekend, so I was still involved with it, just not as much as usual,” he said.
Eyben now is most involved as coach of the region’s 18-man Summer Games team, including seven boys from the Vermilion area, six from the Lloydminster Border Brutes, and representation from the Lakeland Heat and Wood Buffalo Bisons.
While it’s a diverse group from a wide geographic area and teams that usually play against each other, the Zone 7 boys became united with relative ease, their coach reported.
“Everyone is starting to kind of feed off each other,” he said. “They’re starting to become friends. Compared to the first practice, it was Vermilion kids stayed with Vermilion kids, Lloyd stayed with Lloyd, and everything like that.
“And now, it’s starting to become more and more like a team. You couldn’t look at the team from the outside and see that we’re not all from the same place. We’re just one giant team now again.”
The 13- and 14-year-old players showed maturity and put local rivalries behind them, making new friends in the process.
“Every sport has it — every town doesn’t like each other when they play — but this group of kids, they seem to leave it on the floor,” Eyben said. “There’s been no issues, at all, off floor and with joining together as a new team. Yeah, they leave everything on the floor, which is important.”
The players’ parents are a significant cog in the team’s wheel, including assistant coaches Mark Wallis of Lloydminster and Chris Fox of Bonnyville and manager Kaleen Bell, also of Lloyd.
Eyben and his colleagues have had an attentive group of boys.
“The big thing with 13- and 14-year-olds like this, they’re easily coached and they’re adaptive to change,” he said. “So, they can learn from other players, and then when they go back to their organizations, they can bring back one or two tips that they learned from someone else. In turn, it just kind of grows the entire sport.”
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