A wave of change in lacrosse popularity

By Ian MacMaster
ON COLLEGE LACROSSE

When people think of sports they think of the big three. They think of football, basketball and baseball. However, over the past few years lacrosse has blown up and spread across America at a pandemic rate.

What used to be considered an elite sport, or a sport for rich kids has become something fun for anyone to do. Lacrosse has expanded across state lines, color barriers and across oceans.

Ask any lacrosse enthusiast and they will tell you that if you want to find the best lacrosse players in America, go to Maryland or New York. If you want to find the best lacrosse players outside of the United States, go to Canada.
Some of the best players to have ever played the game came from these areas. Guys like Gary and Paul Gait from Canada, and the Powell brothers from Carthage, N.Y. Both sets of brothers made an impact on the game and changed the lacrosse world forever. They still continue to change it with their influence.

Players like the Gaits and the Powells are role models and superstars for the sport of lacrosse. They give a face to the sport. They are making it possible for kids in California, Great Britain and other areas of the world who are not from the traditional hotbeds of lacrosse to pick up a stick and start playing the game.

When I was growing up in upstate New York, my area had a lacrosse team at almost every school. Kids who graduated from the high schools near where I lived went on to programs like Johns Hopkins, Syracuse, Lemoyne, Salisbury, Nazareth and many other top-notch programs that have won National Championships.

But still, lacrosse keeps a low profile. Sometimes when I say that I play lacrosse, the person who I’m talking to responds back, “Oh, that sport with the poles with the nets on the end?”

Questions like this make me feel like I play catch with my grandfather’s old fishing net while wearing my dad’s 1970s hockey pads. People think the sport is not in the mainstream, but that can’t be further from the truth.

The mystery of lacrosse is starting to break down. As more and more high school, community colleges, colleges and highly esteemed universities start programs the lacrosse world continues to grow and develop.

More people are starting to play at a younger age. Instead of playing Little League baseball and soccer, more parents are putting their children into youth lacrosse development leagues, an option that adults today didn’t have when they were young. More communities are supporting the changes and helping out.

The increase in players is also creating an increase of schools’ funding for lacrosse programs. Schools like Tompkins Cortland Community College and Wells College, both from New York, are in their first year of having a program. More money is being set aside by administrations to foster the growth of lacrosse.

Big universities like Florida State, Michigan and Brigham Young University all have club teams, but they are trying to make the jump to Division I competition, even though Title IX and other reasons make this harder to achieve.
As players graduate and move on with their lives, they take the love of the game with them. For example a teacher from New York who moves to Texas and realizes their school doesn’t have a team might feel that it is only right to start a lacrosse program. They keep living and spreading the dream of lacrosse.

Lacrosse diffusion is creating teams in places like Ireland, England and Italy. Even Japan has a team that competes in the world games. Even though the same teams (Canada and USA) are the usual winners, there is still a diversification in the talent pool.

I like watching the sport spread. I like seeing the talent pool swell. It means that the same teams won’t be winning all the games. Good players are going to go to different schools and mix things up.

I like watching the games on TV now. I remember when I was young and I had to ask my mother to drive me to any game that I wanted to see.

Now I can sit back on my couch and see a game televised nationally on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, or MSG. My how the world has changed.

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