For Air Force assistant coach Scott Popelar, lacrosse is more than just a sport. In some ways, lacrosse is a way of life. In others, it’s family.

Last month, Popelar was inducted into the Colorado Lacrosse Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Golden. The recognition is a capstone on a 36 year-career as a coach that includes tenures at two local collegiate institutions in the Air Force Academy and Colorado College, a pair of state championships at the high school level, and the best coaching job of all, sharing the game he loves with his daughter.

For a guy who grew up playing lacrosse in Columbus and Worthington, Ohio back when he said there were only four teams statewide, the induction ceremony was somewhat of a surreal moment.

“It hit me on Saturday when I had seen a couple people I hadn’t seen in a while that were able to make it out. Particularly coach Sean Woods who I coached with for 10 years at Colorado College. He’s now head coach at Amherst College in Massachusetts. So he flew out here and he was only here for like 20 hours but just to make it out here for the ceremony was awesome,” Popelar said. “Just looking out and seeing the folks in front of you, that’s when it hit me how great an honor this was because I saw my family. I saw friends that drove up from Colorado Springs just to be part of it.”

Popelar’s journey with the sport began as young kid noticing his neighbors playing a new game with sticks and nets. Despite the fascination at an early age, Popelar played other sports such as baseball, football and basketball. In high school, he returned to lacrosse, intrigued by the competitive nature of a sport that was accessible to most athletes.

“Some of the best players in the world are 5’9″ 150 pounds and some of the best ones are 6’5″ 240 pounds. So it’s a sport for any athlete but it’s a sport where there’s always something going on, so there’s no where to hide on the field. You really find out how competitive you are,” he said.”

Popelar’s high school coach, Chris Gallagher, gave him his official introduction to the game. After a collegiate career at Ohio State, Popelar starting coaching alongside Gallagher during graduate school, learning how to coach, why to coach, and the values of playing hard, having fun and staying loyal.

Popelar took that knowledge to a Division I program at Butler University in Indiana. Following that, he moved out to Colorado in 1998 and in 2000 and 2006 was a volunteer coach at Air Force. He went on to coach the Fort Collins Unified Team — unified as in a team comprised of players from around the Poudre School District not in the sense of a team of players with varying abilities. He won a state title in 2007, and then won it again the following year for Kent Denver, besting his old school in the state final.

Beginning in 2010, Popelar spent 12 years at Colorado College at the Division III level with coaches Guy Van Arsdale and Sean Woods. When Woods became the head coach at Amherst, Popelar went back to Air Force in 2022 where he has been the pat few seasons.

No matter where he has been as a coach, his goal as always been the same.

Pay it forward.

“I saw it in Ohio and I’ve seen it in Colorado now. There was a guy in Ohio named John Galipault and he was the father of lacrosse in Ohio. He always used to preach pay it forward and that’s all I’ve ever tried to do is if you get something from the game, pay forward, don’t worry about paying back, pay forward. Try and find someone else that you can teach and help them get something from the game.”

Perhaps the ultimate “pay it forward” moment for Popelar was coaching his daughter Allie. He was an assistant coach when Allie played for Rampart in Colorado Springs. In 2015, she was named an All-American by USA Lacrosse and named Gazette Preps Peak Performer of the Year.

Following high school, Allie played at the University of Tampa where she was coached by Kelly Gallagher, Chris’ daughter.

“I had known Kelly since she was born, she had known Allie since she was born and it was really awesome to have her then play for Kelly at Tampa,” Popelar said.

Since graduating from the program, Allie has wasted no time joining the family business and paying it forward to the next generation of lacrosse athletes. She coached at Rampart the past three seasons and this year, serves as an assistant coach for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

“The stuff that jams me is the same stuff that jams her up, whether it’s trying to get the kids to play as hard as they possibly can and play with each other and focus on the details, he said. “We had a day game at Air Force where we played I think it was against Bellarmine this year and it was a noon game and so I was on the sidelines at Air Force at noon, Allie was in the stands. And then, six o’clock later that day we’re at Rampart’s field and I’m on the sideline with her coaching. So that was actually a really unique opportunity to coach at Air Force and at Rampart on the same day that was pretty cool. That’s what this game offers up, these unique opportunities.”

Being in the Colorado Lacrosse Hall of Fame won’t change Popelar’s plans for the future one bit. Moving forward, he’ll chase those unique coaching opportunities and stay loyal to the sport and his local community as his first coach taught him back in 1989.

“If you read about the origins of the game, it’s a creator’s game, it’s a healing game. It represents lots of things and it’s a teaching game,” he said. “So to be able to be a part of it anyway — a small part, there’s some legends in Colorado  that have grown this sport — to be a part of that though and now be associated even if it’s indirectly through the hall of fame, it’s something that’s really gratifying. But it’s really just something I’ve been trying to do because that’s what I was taught to do.”