Lacrosse

Lacrosse is a fast-paced team sport played with a small rubber ball and netted sticks. The game may be played indoors or outdoors, although the outdoor version of the game is much more common. The objective of lacrosse is to advance the ball across the field of play and accumulate points by shooting the ball into the opposing team's goal. In this regard, lacrosse resembles a combination of soccer, hockey, and basketball by utilizing certain elements of each of the aforementioned sports. With roots dating to numerous American Indian cultures of Eastern North America that predate the arrival of Europeans, lacrosse has been popularly labeled "America's first sport," and the present-day version of lacrosse is nicknamed "the fastest game on two feet."

The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Museum, established in 1957, is located in Sparks, Maryland. Three distinct forms of lacrosse exist today: men's field lacrosse, women's field lacrosse, and box (or indoor) lacrosse. The sport is most popular in Canada and in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. New York has long produced more lacrosse players than any other state, with the Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore metropolitan areas also producing significant numbers of athletes and fans. Currently, lacrosse is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States at the scholastic and collegiate levels, although the game is not featured at the Olympics.

During 2006 and 2007, the sport garnered negative media attention when a Black female student accused three white members of the men's lacrosse team at Duke University of rape. These charges were ultimately dismissed in court, although Duke's president cancelled the remainder of the team's 2006 season amid the allegations and subsequent media firestorm.

In 2023, the International Olympics Committee approved the addition of lacrosse to the 2028 Olympics in the lacrosse sixes format.

Origins and History

Historians and anthropologists have designated lacrosse as "America's first sport," given its tremendous popularity and importance to various American Indian cultural groups prior to and at the time of contact with Europeans. However, to be accurate, the game played by the indigenous peoples of North America did serve as a forerunner to the modern sport but differed markedly from contemporary lacrosse in several important respects.

Written accounts produced by French and British missionaries and explorers note that the indigenous game was played on open terrain (as opposed to a designated field) that could span a mile or several miles in length, and players would need to navigate and evade natural obstacles, such as trees, rocks, and hills, as well as opposing players, in order to advance the ball. Also, the number of players per team greatly exceeded that of the modern sport, with any possible number ranging from several dozen to several hundred participants. According to European colonial accounts, matches often took place between members of different tribal groups or different villages, and games held ritualistic, political, spiritual, and religious significance. Shamans customarily blessed players before play began, and the sport was at times used to settle territorial disputes and reaffirm military and political allegiances between different tribes.

The French Catholic Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf is credited with coining the term lacrosse to refer to this game, which he witnessed being played by the Huron Indians of present-day Ontario, Canada in 1636. The term lacrosse loosely translates into English as "curved or arched stick," in reference to the wooden netted sticks that players used to catch and pass the ball. The ball itself was made from either carved, rounded wood or from deer hide stuffed with deer hair, while the nets attached to the sticks were produced with deer sinew and tissue.

Historians note that three distinct styles of indigenous lacrosse existed, which were geographically correlated: the American Indians of the present-day US South played a version of the game where each player held a stick in each hand, while those of the Great Lakes and present-day Eastern Canada and US Northeast used a single stick. The version of the game played by the Iroquois and other Canadian/Northeastern US tribes most closely resembles modern lacrosse.

The modern version of the sport dates to 1867 when W. George Beers, a Canadian dentist, attempted to "civilize" the indigenous game by formally establishing an official set of rules that regulated the size of the field, the number of players permitted per team, necessary equipment, and the basic rules of player conduct and progression of matches. This standardized version of lacrosse soon gained a reputation as a "gentleman's sport" and became known as "Canada's national sport," although ice hockey now holds this designation. Still a British colony in the mid-nineteenth century, lacrosse soon made its way to Britain and to other territories under British colonial authority. Additionally, the modern version of lacrosse with its codified rules quickly became popular in New York and then expanded into Massachusetts, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Maryland. In 1877, New York University established the first collegiate lacrosse team in the United States.

Rules and Regulations

The universal rule of lacrosse is that players are prohibited at all times from touching the ball with their hands. Otherwise, the specific rules of the sport differ considerably between men's and women's lacrosse, as well as between men's field lacrosse and men's indoor (box) lacrosse. Players are granted much more leeway to engage in physical contact in men's lacrosse than in the women's version of the game. This is in part because men wear more protective gear. Men are permitted to body check (slam into) opposing players in an effort to jar the ball loose, so long as they maintain both hands on their lacrosse stick and contact is made above the knees and below the shoulders. Body checking and other forms of violent physical aggression are not permitted under the rules of women's lacrosse. Male players are required to wear helmets with football-like facemasks and chin guards to provide full head protection, as well as a mouthpiece, shoulder pads, a rib protector, gloves, and an athletic cup and supporter to protect the groin area. By contrast, female lacrosse players are only required to wear a mouthpiece, gloves, and goggles to protect the eyes.

At the collegiate and professional levels, a men's lacrosse game is sixty minutes in length, which is divided into fifteen-minute quarters. Women's lacrosse games are also sixty minutes long, but are typically divided into thirty-minute halves. At the scholastic level, games may consist of quarters that range from eight to twelve minutes in length. Box lacrosse is played indoors, often on a converted ice hockey rink, and the field of play is significantly smaller than the outdoor version of the game, where the field is 110 yards long and between 53 and 60 yards wide.

As in hockey, a lacrosse game begins with a face-off in which the ball is placed between two opposing players who stand several inches apart and vie for control of the ball once the referee officially begins the match. The ball used in lacrosse is made of rubber and is approximately 2.5 inches in diameter and five ounces in weight. A nine-foot semicircle, known as the crease, extends in front of the goal at each end of the field. Offensive players are not allowed to enter the crease, and all shots on goal must be made from outside the crease. This provides a certain defensive advantage for goalkeepers. Goalkeepers wear additional protective gear, such as throat guards, to prevent injuries. Box lacrosse goalies wear thicker padding than goalies in field lacrosse, as well as shin and thigh guards.

Strategy and Tactics

The strategy of lacrosse is relatively straightforward: to move the ball into the opponent's territory and score as many goals as possible. Victory is awarded to the team who has scored the most goals by the end of the game. Men's lacrosse is played with ten players per team, while women's lacrosse features twelve players per team. There are four player positions in lacrosse: goalkeeper, attacker, midfielder, and defender. Attackers focus primarily on offense and their objective is to score goals, while defenders concentrate on preventing opposing attackers from scoring. Midfielders play a combination of offense and defense and are granted much more leeway to venture into both the offense and defensive sides of the field.

Coaches often instruct defenders to keep their stick elevated at all times to obstruct opposing attackers' visibility downfield and to increase the ability to intercept or block opposing passes and shots on goal. Attackers find it extremely advantageous to learn to pass and shoot effectively with either hand to catch defenders off-guard; additionally, attackers can usually evade defenders more successfully if they alter their speed when running downfield (speeding up and slowing down, then speeding up again) rather than constantly running at full speed.

Professional Leagues and Series

Two men's professional lacrosse leagues exist in the United States: Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) and the National Lacrosse League (NLL). The PLL was formed in 2018, when player Paul Rabil left the Major League Lacrosse (MLL) league. Its inaugural season was played in 2019, with its players receiving a minimum salary of $25,000. In 2020, the PLL expanded to eight teams and merged with the now-defunct MLL.

The MLL, which was founded in 1999 by Jake Steinfeld and sponsored annual seasons between 2001 and 2020, featured field lacrosse and consisted of nine teams: the Atlanta Blaze, Boston Cannons, Charlotte Hounds, Chesapeake Bayhawks, Denver Outlaws, Florida Launch, New York Lizards, Ohio Machine, and Rochester Rattlers. The MLL championship was known as the Steinfeld Cup. Over the course of its nineteen-year existence, the MLL experienced a series of ups and downs stemming from lacrosse's lack of widespread, mainstream exposure and limited commercial and revenue-generating success. When the MLL merged with the PLL, only the Boston Cannons moved to the new league, being rebranded the Cannons Lacrosse Club; the rest of the MLL teams became defunct.

The NLL experienced somewhat greater financial and media success than the MLL, as it includes professional teams based in major metropolitan markets in both the United States and Canada. The NLL features indoor lacrosse and has existed since 1987. It also has only nine teams: the Buffalo Bandits, Calgary Roughnecks, Colorado Mammoth, Georgia Swarm, New England Black Wolves, Rochester Knighthawks, Toronto Rock, Saskatchewan Rush, and Vancouver Stealth. Compared to the MLL, NLL games have attained more televised coverage and a higher degree of corporate partnerships and sponsorships. Most of NLL's players are Canadian nationals, and the fact that the league features three Canada-based teams helps increase its fan base and viewership. The NLL's championship is known as the Champion's Cup.

In 2021, the Athletes Unlimited League, a women's professional lacrosse league, held its inaugural season. Instead of consistent teams, the league is made up of individual players who play under different team captains every game. In 2023, there were fifty-six players in the league.

Throughout the history of the modern Olympic games, lacrosse competition was only featured in 1904 and 1908. The sport did not have a significant enough international appeal to justify its inclusion as an event at either the Summer or Winter Olympics until 2018, when the IOC granted World Lacrosse provisional recognition. Lacrosse received full recognition in 2021, and in 2023, the IOC approved lacrosse to be added as an Olympic sport for the 2028 Olympics. The sport will be featured in the lacrosse sixes format, a variant of traditional field lacrosse played with six players on each side created in 2021 in a bid for Olympic participation.

Popularity

Lacrosse remains a niche sport; that is, it is a nonmainstream sport characterized by a relatively small, but highly devoted fan base. Lacrosse historian Donald Fisher contends that certain unique features of lacrosse have limited the sport's appeal and popularity throughout American history until very recent decades. From the time lacrosse gained a foothold as a competitive collegiate and scholastic sport in the United States in the late 1800s until the 1970s, lacrosse sticks were primarily produced by hand by Mohawk Indian craftsmen in Ontario, Canada. Lacrosse sticks have only been industrially mass produced since then. The limited production of lacrosse sticks made the items costly and greatly limited public access to this equipment, thus cultivating a reputation for lacrosse as a sport only for the affluent.

Since the early 2000s, lacrosse has greatly increased its popularity and visibility throughout the United States and has expanded its geographic base from the Northeast into the Midwest, South, Rocky Mountain region, and the West Coast. At the high school level, lacrosse is currently the fastest-growing sport in the nation. According to statistics compiled by US Lacrosse, approximately a quarter of a million Americans participated in lacrosse (at the scholastic, collegiate, and professional levels combined) in 2001. Within two decades, that number more than tripled to eight hundred thousand participants.

During the 2014–15 academic year, forty-two colleges and universities launched varsity programs in men's and/or women's lacrosse, with such programs established at an additional twenty-nine institutions of higher education during the 2016–17 session. In 2022, the National Collegiate Athletics Association oversaw 74 Division I men's lacrosse teams and 120 Division I women's lacrosse teams, as well as a number of Division II and Division III teams. Advocates of lacrosse are optimistic that the sport's rapid pace and growing presence at the high school level will generate a new fan base and pool of athletes among the younger generation in the near future.

Bibliography

Craft, Kevin. "Will Lacrosse Ever Go Mainstream?" The Atlantic, 13 Apr. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/will-lacrosse-ever-go-mainstream/255690/. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Davis, Noah. "Lacrosse Doesn't Pay the Rent." The Wall Street Journal, 31 May 2012, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303640104577436811966763578. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Fisher, Donald. Lacrosse: A History of the Game. Johns Hopkins UP, 2011.

Goulding, Grace. "Lacrosse Sixes at the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028: Everything You Need to Know About the New Sport at LA28." Olympics, 12 Aug. 2024, olympics.com/en/news/lacrosse-sixes-at-olympic-games-los-angeles-2028-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-sport-at-la28. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

"Lacrosse." Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 July 2024, www.britannica.com/sports/lacrosse. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Pickman, Ben. "Major League Lacrosse Merging Into Premier Lacrosse League." Sports Illustrated, 16 Dec. 2020, www.si.com/lacrosse/2020/12/16/premier-lacrosse-league-major-league-lacrosse-merger-future. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Price, Ben. 25 Years of Limestone College Men's Lacrosse. Arcadia Publishing, 2017.

Wasserman, Howard. Institutional Failures: Duke Lacrosse, Universities, the News Media, and the Legal System. Routledge, 2016.

Zimmerman, Don, and Peter England. Men's Lacrosse. Human Kinetics, 2013.