John Meister received his first lacrosse stick when he was 12 years old and thought getting that stick was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The Long Island (N.Y.) native never picked up a baseball glove after that and went on to compete in lacrosse, wrestling and football in high school, which eventually led him to playing lacrosse at Brown University.

Today, Meister is the president of Major League Lacrosse’s Chicago Machine, which is beginning their third year.

Meister, who also is the head coach for the Fenwick boys varsity lacrosse team and a River Forest resident, shared his thoughts about the Machine’s upcoming season, his experience with Fenwick and the tremendous growth of the sport in recent years.

Q What are your expectations for the Machine this season?
A You know, we are very excited. I think we still have the youngest team in the league. We had a great finish to last season. We played one of the finalists in the playoffs very tough in our last game, and so we’re optimistic. We have young kids, but they’re all in good shape and working hard. We had a good camp.

Q How do you go about drafting players for Major League Lacrosse?
A We’re drafting kids out of college. The way the college draft works is the MLL takes the top 50 college players and brings them to a combine. And that combine is the Wednesday after the NCAA Championship game on Monday (Memorial Day). The coaches and the general managers get to evaluate the top 50 players, and we do a five-round draft. Each team has five draft picks and we actually have the No. 1 pick right now. There’s a very good amount of college players coming out to play in the pros.

Q What factors have aided the growth of lacrosse in the Midwest?
A Well, I think it’s not only growing in the Midwest. It’s growing in Texas; it’s growing in California. The game is different for these kids. People who see the game for the first time, it’s physical like football. There’s some pretty interesting hitting, but it’s fast. There’s a lot of up-and-down and so it has the speed of soccer, the hitting of football and the finesse of basketball. A lot of the plays are basketball plays. You’re getting half court, you’re playing triangle offense and you’re playing man-to-man and zone defense. So the play making is very similar to basketball and we’re starting to get some of the better athletes to play the game.

Q So does the Machine have scouting personnel?
A We have our coaching staff and we pretty much watch as many of the college games as we can to get an idea of who the players are. The MLL will list who the top 50 are. They will invite 50 guys to come to this combine and they’re all seniors. It’s a full day. They workout in the morning and they’re put them through speed, agility and strength drills. Then they play in an all-star game so the management and the coaches of the MLL teams get to watch them play. Then we do the draft and it’s live on ESPNU. So, it’s a pretty exciting day for the MLL.

Q What happens to the college kids who don’t make the top 50 list?
A If they want to play and they didn’t get selected, they’ll go into the player pool. At the end of the season, we will protect 20 players. Anyone who’s not officially protected on a roster goes into the pool and then we have a supplemental draft where we add players from the supplement draft. We had the No. 1 pick in the supplement draft this year and we ended up picking this kid Rob Smith, who was an all-American from (the University of) Delaware. He was not eligible to enter the draft last year for some reason and so he came into the pool after the season was over and we ended up taking him in the supplemental (draft). He’s a big kid and a great player and will most likely start for us. The top three or four players in the supplemental are good picks to have.

Q How much does your role with the Machine benefit the Fenwick lacrosse program?
A The Machine runs camps and we run clinics. The Machine players come and make appearances at practices, but the players will do that for any team, not just Fenwick. It’s all about just trying to get these kids exposed to some of the better players and get them exposed to bringing their game to a different level. They really need to make a commitment to the game. It takes a lot of time and effort to develop the skills to be able to play this game at the higher level. A lot of these kids began four years ago. They never picked up a stick until they got to high school. For lacrosse to get really better in Illinois, we’re going to need to have feeder programs. We’re going to need to start earlier with the youth. There’s a company called Lacrosse America here in Illinois that does a real nice job at starting kids out early. We just need to be doing more of it. But it’s happening. I think right now there are 49 high schools that play at a varsity level and another seven to nine that play junior varsity. The way the IHSLA (Illinois High School Lacrosse Association) works is you start a program and play junior varsity for two years. Then you play varsity “B” for three years. In your sixth year as a program, you move up to the “A” division. This is only our fifth year with the program. But we moved up because we won the “B” championship last year.