The Mars boys lacrosse team recently won its 10th straight WPIAL Class 2A championship, an accomplishment establishing the Fightin’ Planets as the undisputed team of the decade and the kings of WPIAL Class 2A boys lacrosse.
The Mt. Lebanon boys lacrosse team has enjoyed similar success, only to a slightly lesser extent than the Planets’ decade of dominance. The Blue Devils have won seven WPIAL titles, the most in Class 3A, including three straight from 2023-25.
How did these programs emerge to reach the top of their respective classifications? It starts with the community loving lacrosse from a young age.
“It’s really big in Mars, and it really is a tight-knit community. … It’s more than just having a really good youth program,” Mars boys lacrosse coach Bob Marcoux said. “It’s having the youth program with the right culture.”
That culture of loving lacrosse, beginning at the youth level, has stayed with players through high school and beyond.
It has extended to parents, too. The three fathers of players on the team who volunteered to record stats for Mars during the WPIAL Class 2A championship game praised the youth program for its culture.
Mars, which became the first WPIAL team to win a PIAA lacrosse championship in 2022, created its youth program about 15 years ago with a focus on developing players, not winning immediately. This focus on development in the youth program, Marcoux believes, is a major part of why Mars has claimed trophy after trophy at the high school level in his 10 years at the head of the Fightin’ Planets.
“They don’t even have A and B teams until they get to seventh and eighth grade, so it’s really more about having fun, enjoying the sport, learning the sport and then developing the skills. So every year we get a fresh batch of kids that we know very well from the youth program and already have kind of been exposed to our culture, the Mars culture,” Marcoux said. “It’s a big culture. It’s everybody. It’s even the girls program.”
The girls program at Mars has won five of the last six WPIAL Class 2A titles, tied for second-most all-time. The only school with more is Mt. Lebanon, which won its eighth championship this May.
“I think (enthusiasm is) equal across the two programs,” Mt. Lebanon boys lacrosse coach Mike Ermer said. “I know our guys support the girls all the time. … To go and be in a WPIAL championship setting (for the girls team’s championship win) when the seniors on this team hadn’t lost a WPIAL playoff game, and they had just lost one, and to be willing to, or eager even to, go and experience that for their girls, their friends, that I think speaks a lot to how much both programs mean to the community.”
Ermer agrees that having a strong youth program is essential for success at the high school level.
“We go all the way down to, I think, kindergarten now, and there are hundreds of kids playing on both the boys and the girls side, and getting sticks in kids’ hands early makes my life a little bit easier, for sure,” Ermer said. “So, it’s 100 percent big. Establishing a good youth program is the key to longevity, for sure.”
Ermer is in his 17th and final season leading the Blue Devils, as he said he would be stepping down once Mt. Lebanon’s state tournament run ends. Throughout his playing and coaching career, Ermer has seen how lacrosse has grown and thrived in Mt. Lebanon.
“I think it has become kind of part of the culture, you know, driving home from practice, or to practice, seeing kids walking down the street with sticks in their hands that are like elementary age or middle school age. … When I was in second and third grade, and I was walking over to Washington Elementary to throw a ball against the wall, people were giving me some funny looks back in the ‘80s,” Ermer said. “Now it’s commonplace. People start yelling at kids for bouncing balls off of walls and buildings and stuff like that.”
To pinpoint the year in which Mt. Lebanon’s boys program started its rise, Ermer went with 1998, two years after he graduated from the school.
“We started to attract the best athletes in each class. Before that, we had some good athletes, we had some fringe athletes, but the guys that were playing football weren’t really playing lacrosse in the spring until that class of ’98 with my predecessor, Kee Joe Song. … That’s continued when I took over the program in 2010,” Ermer said. “We’ve got football, wrestling, soccer, hockey guys, the best athletes, playing multiple sports, which is, I think, really important.”
Whether the culture of lacrosse, which these programs have fostered, drives their success or the other way around is debatable. Nevertheless, for Marcoux in particular, the achievements of the Mars boys program have been nothing short of remarkable.
“We never imagined anything like this. Yeah, we were laughing that some of these kids on this team were 4 years old when we won our first one,” Marcoux said. “So, yeah, it’s hard to put it all into perspective right now, but I’m sure I’ll have some time to think about it when I get home and the season’s over.”