As America’s fastest growing and oldest sport, many might find themselves choosing to play lacrosse this season over football or soccer. With a long and often unknown history in North America, this originally Iroquois field sport has been rapidly growing in popularity and will soon be found in your high-school. In our age of technological efficiency filled with high speed social media, Tweeting and lightning-fast video games, it’s no wonder why young athletes are compelled to play one of the nation’s most fast paced and exiting sports that retains many of the their favorite elements of football, basketball and soccer.
Since 2006, lacrosse has grown over 77 percent at the youth level, with over 280,000 high-school players nationwide. The consistently fastest growing school sport for over a decade, lacrosse doesn’t seem to be receding in popularity anytime soon. The professional leagues have exploded in the past few years and now offer exciting live matches with 17 franchises across the country. The NCAA and collegiate club programs are also becoming standard with nearly a thousand offering positions for passionate high-school players. The sport has been popular for generations at the club and collegiate level in many north east private and prep schools, but is undergoing a cultural shift and making its way into public schools around the country.
With a new generation of passionate lacrosse players entering high-schools, we are sure to see more developed programs and funding in the near future. Lacrosse is a sport that almost any young athlete can play, with larger and heavier players on defense and quicker and more agile athletes in front. Many young athletes appreciate that everyone spends time with the ball and no one is restricted to sit on one side, as in football. The full-contact nature of men’s lacrosse gives players the fun physical contact of tackle football with much less time sitting around on the bench. The seamless intensity and grace of soccer combined with the adrenaline rush of football has given lacrosse players a unique passion that reaches deeply into our nation’s history.
Lacrosse’s history extends back to pre-colonial America, when Iroquois and other natives played enormous matches with hundreds of players on an open field. By the late 1800s, colleges along the northeastern seaboard and Canada had picked it up and were already competing in international tournaments, establishing the modern rules to the game. This lacrosse culture remained there and was never given the potential to become a popular professional sport. Until nearly the 1970s, almost all lacrosse sticks were still made by a few Mohawk Indian craftsmen on secluded reservations. Now, lacrosse equipment is common at major sporting stores and is accessible to those at all income levels regardless of their region.
With such a rich history and undisputed new popularity here in the USA, one wouldn’t expect lacrosse to also be one of the fastest growing sports worldwide. In Canada, it is already considered the national summer sport and their version of indoor "box" lacrosse already draws huge crowds including plenty of converted hockey fans. In Europe, it has also been ranked the fasted growing sport at the college level and has been running a successful professional league since 1995. The men’s and women’s World Championship together draw a total of 36 nations to compete including the Iroquois National Team. The Iroquois team is considered the only First Nation’s team to compete in an international sporting competition and they perform very well while drawing only from a small player base.
California and Ohio are currently the two fastest growing regions for what the Iroquois call "The Creator’s Game", but Colorado, Oregon and Washington will soon also be hosting plenty of public and club lacrosse teams. The momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing down and might only be hindered by competition on school budgets with football, basketball and baseball, whose programs might shrink as young athletes choose the new and exciting option of lacrosse. Sports tend to grow as players develop a love for the game through their parents and older siblings. A young boy who shoots hoop with his father or older brother is likely to develop a love for basketball and soon we’ll be seeing plenty of families with lacrosse fever practicing in backyards across the nation.
Statistics taken from uslacrosse.org and NYtimes.com
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