Our History

Laurels & Leaders, formerly know as Lords & Ladies and – even older yet – Lords & Ladies of the Round Table, has been around for over 20 years. Initially, it was an offshoot of the Society for Creative Anachronism (or the SCA) in southern New Mexico. There were not many children’s activities within the SCA at the time, so L&L filled that niche. The very first padded swords were pillows duct taped around PVC pipes. They have since evolved into much safer instruments!

After some time, a man known as Lord Janin took the helm. Under his guidance, L&L became best known as an after-school program with Enrich the Kids, Inc headed by a woman named Angie. He impacted hundreds if not thousands of lives and established a legacy of honor and integrity. His character had a tremendous impact on the values that L&L uses today.

In an interesting twist of fortune, this is where Zac and Rebecca Egan (the founders of Lords and Ladies Youth Programs, Inc.) met. They were both children and didn’t much notice each other. All Zac remembers of Rebecca is that she had a really, really ugly dragon drawn on her shield. All she remembers of Zac is passing by him during one of the Las Cruces Renaissance Fairs and thinking that the kid with two fingers on his right hand and long blond hair was kind of cute. Zac was very involved with the program, but Rebecca’s interest tapered off and they didn’t meet again for years.

When Zac was in high school, tragedy befell Lord Janin. Janin stepped away and passed the program on to Zac and some of the older L&L boys to run. This is lovingly referred to as the “Wild West” period of L&L and occurred primarily in the (now gone) old wooden castle park, Unidad. There were many experiments that would grant wisdom for later iterations of the program. Chief among these was the flail (a squish ball in a sock duct taped to a piece of PVC), the bow and arrow, and what is fearfully recalled as the Street Sweeper (a massive, two-handed sword that used an entire 12 foot length of PVC in its construction). We have learned from these to (a) never have moving parts on a boffer, (b) no thrown weapons and (c) cap the boffer size.

However, due to parents being understandably hesitant to leave their children in the care of teenage boys, the program died out and was forgotten for years.

However, around 2014, the organizer of Enrich the Kids reached out once more to Zac to see if he would run L&L as an after-school program again. He was busy with work, but at that time was dating Rebecca. Rebecca stepped up to run the program in his stead and began to build L&L back up with what she remembered, artifacts granted to her by Janin, and consultations with Zac. At Hillrise Elementary, the program started back up. It was there that Rebecca first met Mason, at the time a 4th grader and now an adult volunteer for L&L. By bits and pieces, the program began to be codified and to change. As the program gained a following, she expanded the program to local parks, trying to bring some of that following with her.

Wanting to take the program back to its roots and gain the protection that could come from being under another organization, Rebecca and Zac approached the SCA once more, asking if they would be willing to accept L&L as a sub-program. While their local group was supportive, at a larger level there was strong resistance to the idea of implementing children’s programming within the “Kingdom of the Outlands” (Colorado, New Mexico, and some of Texas). After consulting with Angie, it was decided to start moving towards incorporation and purchasing their own liability insurance.

As they reoriented, the program continued to grow and change. After being strongly encouraged by leaders in the SCA not to blend with the local SCA group, L&L moved to an adjacent location now known as the Colosseum (a concrete pit on the NMSU Intramural Fields). From there, the program migrated to Unidad Park to try and bolster its numbers. The castle park was a hit, and they stayed there for years.

During this time, the volunteers grew as well. No longer just Zac and Rebecca, their number grew to include invested parents: Dan, Steve, Jeff, Sarah, and Bear. One one memorable day, there were 50 kids in Unidad wielding swords and playing Capture the Flag. There are many stories that happened during this time that (in a later stroke of inspiration by Warden Tawni) have been recorded in the names and images of a L&L card game.

In 2018, L&L was finally incorporated as Lords and Ladies Youth Programs, Inc. The local SCA chapter, the Shire of Nahrun Kabirun, was integral to the fundraising process. Much of the funds came from L&L families sharing what they have to support the program. We are forever grateful to these donors and the stability that they helped us to achieve.

While the volunteers and the kids have shifted and changed and we continue to refine the program with what we have learned, the Laurels & Leaders’ heart stays the same: working to create a safe community where children and youth can play, learn, and grow.

Our Achievements

As of early 2024, we have a team of 15 volunteers who take time out of their own weekends almost every weekend to support kids through Laurels & Leaders. Of these 15 volunteers, 4 are young adults who grew up in the Laurels & Leaders program and are now running aspects of it alongside the rest of us 30-50 year olds. We have a good method for teaching leadership skills, as many of the older teenagers know how to run games independently.

At each gathering, we provide free and healthy snacks. All of our programming is free and we provide all equipment that is needed. We are currently raising enough money to not have to buy everything out-of-pocket and still cover insurance.

We currently see anywhere from 16 -28 kids on a given weekend based on our recent averages. Many are regulars, but some are new. We have worked with the following populations: refugees children, physically disabled children, neurodivergent children, children of color, LGBTQ+ children, and more. These children create close-knit communities and consider the volunteers to be trustworthy. Twice, we’ve been called in the middle of the night by a teenager enrolled in Laurels and Leaders who is worried about another participant committing suicide. We’ve been able to support those teens and their families and many of our volunteers are QPR trained (named for the CPR procedure, but it addresses suicide). Some of the families have told us that their child was suicidal before joining Laurels & Leaders, but due to the community they found here have made support networks that help them heal. There is at least one mental health provider in Las Cruces who refers some of their clients to us.

Our values system is robust, effective, and measurable. Additionally, we work with the children to not only look for the criteria for “ranking up,” but also model how to support peers who are struggling with a concept or skill. We have heard from many parents that they have seen differences in their child since bringing them to Laurels & Leaders.

Our Goals

Looking to the future we would like to:

• Be able to provide more free meals for children and youth in the Las Cruces area. Finding a sponsor to help us purchase free lunches would enable us to support local families.
• Recruit a more diverse group of volunteers. We are working on creating a more robust training process to support this goal
• Recruit a more diverse group of participants. We are working on establishing better marketing practices to support this goal.
• Continue to develop rewards and incentives for donors to thank them for their generosity. We are working with local businesses as much as possible to support this effort.
• Continue to develop connections with families. We are working towards this goal by planning more family events, such as barbecues.
• Find steady streams of income which will enable us to expand the program and put more time and effort towards meeting our goals. We are working towards this by improving our marketing practices and trying to find local partners.
• And finally, develop a card game that helps to encapsulate the spirit of Laurels & Leaders while also being fun to play. We have a draft deck being printed and will continue to play test.