A Baby Knights (Rutgers) player, left, attempts to move past a Go Big Red (Cornell) player during a Lake Placid Summit Classic game on Monday. (Enterprise photo — Parker O’Brien)

LAKE PLACID — Some of the best boys and girls high school lacrosse players from around the United States are back in this village for the 36th annual Lake Placid Summit Classic lacrosse tournament.

The event, which began on Monday, essentially folds two tournaments into one big event. It started with the scholastic side first — which consists of youth, high school and soon-to-be college-level athletes — and will follow with the adult group. The event will run until Sunday.

This year, the scholastic tournament features 90 total teams across eight different divisions — four boys and four girls, according to Lake Placid Summit Classic Event Director Kevin Leveille. The total number was a bit down from years prior, which Leveille attributed to the team’s backing out at the last minute.

“What happens is the lacrosse season is very busy and there’s more and more happening each year, so we’re kind of at the end of the line with the season, so we’ll end up with a couple of teams that back out and things like that,” he said. “But, it’s a good number of teams and we’ve got good divisions that are nicely balanced as well.”

In the adult tournament, which kicks off today, Leveille said there will be about 140 teams across its 18 divisions — 13 men’s and five women’s. While most divisions are the same, this year they’ve added a 70-plus group.

In the past, the 70-plus was just one single game; this year, however, they’ll have a four-team division. Leveille noted that some of these players competed in the original tournament back in 1990.

“Those guys are still very competitive,” he said. “(They’re) not as fast as they used to be, so it kind of looks like it kind of looks like tall youth lacrosse players who are just starting for the first time in the same vein. But there are a couple of guys that can still run like horses, so it’s fun to watch.”

For Leveille, this division in general is pretty special to him. His father, George, who founded the Summit Classic here in 1990, is set to play in the 70-plus group.

“He’s been working out, getting ready and him and all of his buddies are all excited and ready to go,” Leveille said.

There are a handful of local teams and players competing in the scholastic tournament, Leveille said, including the Lake Effect Storm team in the girls’ divisions. He added that it’s great to see that lacrosse is growing in this area.

“Lake Placid is a lacrosse town. It’s on the map in a major way, and it’s great to see it kind of impacting the futures of the locals,” he said.

The top girls division in the younger tournament is the Northstars. It’s a division made up of NCAA Division I committed lacrosse players from across the country, representing their future university, before officially playing for their collegiate team.

While the boys teams have players who are committed to Division I schools, they aren’t necessarily tied to one university.

“It’s just a high-level high school lacrosse here on the boys side. We’ve got some of the better high school players in the country as well,” Leveille said. “It seems like the younger kids keep getting better every year — which is pretty wild — and bigger, so it’s kind of crazy to watch.”

This event marks the second of two showcase tournaments that were held in Lake Placid. The first was the Lake Placid Summit Youth Classic in June. They’ve held tournaments like this all over the country this past summer.

But for Leveille, this one has been a big part of his lacrosse journey. He said he remembers coming up here in its earlier days, before there were really any professional lacrosse teams.

“So it was a lot of the best players in the world, and I’d just park on the sidelines with my siblings and other kids, while the guys were out there playing and we’d watch,” he said. “Just being able to watch a lot of the best players do their thing up close and then when they’d go off for a timeout, I’d run out and shoot on the goal for a little bit, then run off before they came back on. All of that was just stuff that was part of my path.”

Leveille later played college lacrosse at UMass from 2000 to 2003. He then went on to play in professional lacrosse for 11 seasons, including in the Major League Lacrosse, which merged with the Premier Lacrosse League in 2020. He was also inducted into the Professional Lacrosse Hall of Fame earlier this year.

“It was quite an honor to be, you know, put into a Hall of Fame class for the Pro League,” he said. “It never was a goal or anything like that, it wasn’t even like a thought, honestly, but (I’m) pretty lucky to go in. And I went in with some of the greatest to ever play the game, so it was quite an honor.”

During the Summit Classic’s adult tournament, the organization will induct five individuals and one team into the Legends of Placid Lax (a Hall of Fame group) on Thursday at the Intervales Base Lodge located at the Olympic Jumping Complex. The ceremony will highlight this year’s inductees.They are Tom Abbott, Marty Ruglis, Kara DePaula, Chuck Cohen, Norm Smith and the Ohio Wesleyan University alumni team.