Marquette students launch Missouri's first high school cricket club

Marquette students launched Missouri’s first high school cricket club, and they did it without waiting for a statewide blueprint. The MHS Cricket Club started during the 2025-26 school year, had about 30 members, and met during Ac-Lab on football turf in Chesterfield.

The club’s student leaders, Chaitanya Chaturvedi, Lalitaditya Vasanth and Abhijith Nair, built the group around a simple idea: cricket belongs inside the high school extracurricular system, not just in adult leagues or weekend pickup matches. Chaturvedi said he hoped to expand the club and eventually host a high school cricket tournament, which gives the effort a clear next step beyond casual play.

That matters in a place like Marquette High, which sits in Rockwood School District and already treats extracurriculars as part of school life, tied to school pride, school climate and student growth. The club also shows how a school can add cricket without building a dedicated oval overnight. Football turf was available, so the students used it, turning existing space into a workable entry point for a sport that still has to earn its place on Missouri campuses.

The bigger pipeline is already taking shape around them. American Cricket Academy has been pushing school assemblies, teacher development, school and classroom partnerships, and after-school programs across Missouri. The organization says it began in July 2015 with six kids and has since reached more than 2,000 physical education teachers and more than 5,000 students through outreach. A recent Missouri profile put the group at more than 200 athletes, with active parents helping sustain the program.

Missouri’s after-school guidance from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education fits that model closely. Its framework treats after-school programs as school-family-community partnerships and says they can include sports and cultural activities, exactly the kind of structure a cricket club needs if it is going to survive past a single season.

Marquette’s students also looked outside Missouri for proof of concept. In Texas, USA High School Cricket says its Central Texas league, established in 2022, was the state’s first organized high school cricket league and includes schools such as Cedar Ridge, Legacy Ranch, McNeil, Round Rock, Leander, Vandegrift, Westlake and Westwood. In New Jersey, Monroe Township High School senior Abeer Khan created the first-ever cricket club at his school, and the state now has several thriving leagues and many young players.

That is the real story here: on a football turf in Chesterfield, cricket stopped looking like a one-off novelty and started looking like a school habit Missouri could repeat.