Bermuda will be represented at the World Lacrosse Championships for the very first time later this month ? only four years after the sport was first played on the Island.

A 23-man squad made up of both expats and Bermudians has been selected to travel to London, Ontario for the prestigious event, where Bermuda will take on the likes of Finland, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Spain in a ?development group?.

Bermuda Lacrosse Association president Jon Heckscher revealed yesterday that they now have over 40 members and, thanks to a couple of significant sponsorships, are planning to target local schools in order to expand the sport further.

?It started off as just a few expats throwing a ball around at Bernard Park and has developed from there,? he said.

?Now we?ve got a pretty good group of guys who are turning out every week, including some Bermudian teenagers like Brett Corday, Jake Nichols and John Buchanan who are at school or college in the US and play lacrosse there.

?We?ve got two hefty sponsorship deals with Montpellier Re and Endurance and with the money they have given us we plan to go into the schools and persuade them to make lacrosse part of their physical education curriculum because we want to get as many new people playing the sport as possible.

?As far as the World Championships are concerned, obviously this is our first time and it is difficult to know how well we are going to do.

?We think we could do well against Spain and Denmark, but we know that the Czech Republic and Finland are loaded with American expats so we might struggle against them. We haven?t got any great expectations at this stage, we are the oldest team in the tournament by quite a long way with an average age of 33, so it will be interesting to see how we go.? Adam Szakmary, John Nicholls, Kirk Bridgewater, Evan Schemenauer, Christopher Kelly, Stephen Velotti, Matthew Clifford, Ernie Theriault, Michael McDonnell, Brett Corday, John Buchanan, Barry Lohan, Stephen Michel, Gavin Davis, Sean Moore, Jonathan Heckscher, John Bohan, Andew Baron, Andrew Soucie, Dana George, Rich Schneider, Michael Totman