The Rising Popularity of Lacrosse
Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing team sports in the United States. Statistics support this claim. It is really growing by “leaps and bounds”. You could imagine that lacrosse is a relatively new game that is exciting to play and features competition at many levels. If so, you would be partially correct.
Yes, lacrosse is exciting to play and does feature competition at many levels. No, it is not a relatively new game. Actually, it is the first truly American sport because North American Indian tribes first played it in the 1400’s. The Iroquois, Huron, Algonquin and other tribes called it “baggataway” and often used it for military training.
In Canada, French miss
ionaries gave the sport its name because they thought the stick used by Indian tribes looked like the crosier, or le crosse, that was carried by bishops. A Canadian dentist, George Beers, is considered the father of modern lacrosse because he revised rules for playing the game. Lacrosse spread to England, Ireland, Scotland and Australia. Lacrosse, not hockey, is the national sport of Canada.
Moving ahead to the present, US Lacrosse: National Governing Body of Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse provides facts about growth of the sport: “No sport has grown faster at the high school level over the last 10 years and there are now an estimated 169,000 high school players. Lacrosse is also the fastest-growing sport over the last five years at the NCAA level and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 400 college club programs, the majority of which compete under the umbrella of US Lacrosse and its "intercollegiate associates" level“.
Action reports about lacrosse regularly appear in a variety of newspapers, newsletters, Lacrosse Magazine and on a variety of websites. For example, in New Jersey, the Junior Girls Lacrosse League reports that they have 5,000 members. Their goal “is to instill a love of the game of lacrosse through a solid foundation of skills, positive coaching and competitive games for girls throughout New Jersey“. US Lacrosse reports that its Youth Council “hosts two annual US Lacrosse Youth Festivals - events that feature over 90 regional girls' and boys' all-star teams from throughout the country in under-13 and under-15 age brackets“.
If you are really interested in lacrosse, you can visit The Lacrosse Museum and National Hall of Fame as well as the headquarters of US Lacrosse in Maryland. You will find it well worth the trip and learn that they are part of the rising popularity of the game.