When the sport of lacrosse earned its return to the Olympic stage at LA 2028, Lacrosse Canada needed more than a highlight reel. They needed their community, current members, prospective players, parents, and coaches to actually understand what was coming: who the athletes are, what Sixes lacrosse looks like on the field, how a national team gets selected, and what it means to chase gold on the biggest stage the sport has ever had. That became “
Road to Sixes“, a four-episode documentary series: “
Why We Play“, “
The Game“, “
The Team“, and “
Together We Are Golden.”
To tackle this project, Pat Kohan led the project personally, alongside Emmy Award-winning cinematographer John Barnhart and editor Tyler Naretto. After multiple rounds of project briefs to tie the story directly to Lacrosse Canada’s business and exposure goals, the team shot the entire documentary series in two days in Oshawa, Ontario, interviewing athletes from both the men’s and women’s national teams.
Two days of footage doesn’t leave much room for error, especially when the story has to hold up for years. LA 2028 was still two years out at the time of filming, so the series couldn’t lean on the results of the future tournament. To navigate this constraint, the team built the series to be evergreen from the start, centered on the people and the process rather than singular results.
Our association-specific judgment showed up in two places. First, in handling lacrosse’s Indigenous origins with the right sensitivity. We honor that history in conjunction with the Team Canada story being told. Second, our association-based knowledge was used in weaving the men’s and women’s programs into one unified national narrative instead of treating them as two separate stories bolted together.
As with any project, there were production hurdles: Midway through the shoot, several of our Lacrosse Canada contacts left for other opportunities. Kohan stayed the course and delivered what was committed to. Our persistence ensured the project didn’t stall and hit its desired deadlines.
Road to Sixes shipped as four episodes, five minutes each, distributed across YouTube and social. Since, the series has pulled 96,000 views across platforms and drove 15.7% follower growth for Lacrosse Canada. Real, measurable movement for a national governing body’s digital presence.
