The Origins of Rye Lacrosse: Meet RHS ‘63 Grad Per Jensen

The Rye Boys Lacrosse Team is underway for their 2025 season in search of their fifth consecutive Section 1 championship and seventh regional title in their 62-year history. The Garnets have developed into a perennial powerhouse under Head Coach Steve Lennon, but it was not always sunflowers and rainbows for the program.

In the team’s inaugural year of 1963, the Garnets lost their only game of the season to the Scarsdale Raiders, a 22-3 blowout. The team was composed of a group of friends who wore wrestling knee pads, outdated leather football helmets, and speed gloves. The only other local school team was the Raiders, meaning the season was capped at one singular game.

Worse than losing by 19, the co-founders of the team, RHS class of ’63  seniors Bruce Gray and Per Jensen, graduated that spring and left the year-old program in uncertainty.

“We all went off to college and never thought about lacrosse again,” Jensen, now 80 years old, told MyRye.com. “You know, I assumed [the program] probably just died off.”

However, as it turned out, Jensen and Gray laid a solid enough foundation for the lacrosse program to become what it is today, where it seemingly reaches new heights every year. And while Gray has since passed away, Jensen has come to enjoy being one of the team’s biggest fans, watching games at Nugent Stadium for the past few years.

“I sit there in total shock,” Jensen told MyRye.com. “These guys are like professional athletes.”

There is no doubt the current program is a hotbed for talent. The Garnets push out championship-caliber teams and multiple NCAA Division One commits annually – and none of it would have happened without that initial push from Jensen and his classmates in 1963.

Per Jensen (pronounced ‘peer’) was born in Denmark and moved to the United States in 1950, while still a young child. He lived on Parkway Drive with his mother and father when in Rye and attended Milton Elementary and Rye High School. 

He consistently traveled during his young adulthood, regularly flying back to Europe to attend trade shows and visit factories in the summer starting when he was just thirteen years old. After college, Jensen enlisted in the army and moved around consistently with his unit before his service time concluded. He then moved to White Plains, but stayed connected to Rye through his family business.

Starting the Rye High School’s lacrosse program was not Jensen’s only entrepreneurial endeavor. He founded a contemporary gifts shop called Copenhagen, Denmark Gifts, located just a few stores down from present-day Little Thai Kitchen on Purchase Street. Jensen designed and sourced everything he sold.

The Dane’s zest for travel did not cease after the army. In fact, it is still a priority for him today at age 80, although now for recreational instead of work-related purposes. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Jensen had made 122 trips to China, 89 to Brazil, 70+ to Argentina, over 100 to Europe, 25 to Thailand, and 70 to India. In total, by his own estimation, Jensen believes he has traveled over six million miles and spent over 9,000 nights in hotel rooms, including his time in barracks.

“It’s been a wonderful life,” Jensen told MyRye.com. “I’m going to keep going till I drop.”

Post-COVID, Jensen has slowed his travel and discovered another love – Rye High School athletics. He started by attending ‘The Game’ – Garnets football vs Harrison – and then quickly learned of the success of the boys lacrosse team. For the past five years, he has been a regular fan at Nugent Stadium for lax games, and has witnessed the team built from the program he started over six decades ago win a Section One championship each and every year since 2021.

Jensen admits watching the present-day success reminds him of his first and only career game in a Garnets uniform from 1963. He laughs at the memory of the time he tried to check a Scarsdale defender and ended up on the ground with cleat marks on his upper body. The makeshift equipment didn’t seem to protect the attacker much.

More than just the game, the Dane remembers the fun and thrill of putting it all together, scrounging for equipment, asking enough friends to build a roster. He recalls that his stick was a borrowed defender’s long stick, off of which he chopped some length. Jensen has since donated the artifact to the Rye High School Athletic Department and hopes it will one day be in a school display along with the story of the origins of Rye’s lacrosse program.

“It’s not because I want credit for myself,” Jensen said, explaining his decision to donate the symbolic stick. “But we’ve got one of the finest lacrosse teams and its legacy, right? And somebody should remember how it started.”

Steve Lennon has played a large role in the legacy of Rye lacrosse, and has his own timeworn stick in his coaching bag at all times. 

“I carry a traditional wooden Alf Jacques Haudenosaunee lacrosse stick when I coach, and Per approached me [one day] asking about the stick,” Lennon told MyRye.com. “After speaking with him, I was captivated by his stories and how he and his classmates started the Rye lacrosse program. Just like the stick starting as a hickory seedling, Per planted that seed and something really powerful has come from it. He is a pioneer.”

Alongside the Iroquois stick, Lennon’s coaching bag also dons a Rye Garnets pin, a gift from Jensen. The head coach knows the importance of Per Jensen in the story of Rye lacrosse, including his support as a fan in 2025.

Beyond his regular attendance at Nugent Stadium for home lax games, Jensen has taken to watching road contests on the streaming service LocalLive. This has also sparked an interest in the girls lax team – another group that has established a tradition of excellence. Jensen credits the rise of both programs to the way he was raised throughout junior high and high school, both athletically and beyond.

“People go through life and they are not always winners,” Jensen told MyRye.com. “In Rye, we grew up as winners.”