LAX on LAX on LAX

“Oh so you hit people and it’s like hockey and stuff right?” is usually the response I get when I tell people that I play lacrosse. Most of my friends and family had never seen a lacrosse game when I started playing. Just so we get this out of the way- hockey on a field is field hockey and not lacrosse. More on what lacrosse as a game is like later.

I’m relatively new to the world of lacrosse. I’ve only been playing for about 4 years, first on my high school team, and now on a club travel team. No schools had men’s or women’s lacrosse programs where I grew up in California. I didn’t have any idea what it was; I probably knew more about curling at that point. Eventually, a group of local high schools decided that they were going to start both men’s and women’s lacrosse teams at the same time so that teams in our league could play each other so I decided to join the team my senior year and had absolutely no idea what I was doing half the time. I had been a competitive swimmer since age 6, and had also done track and field, water polo, and volleyball, but no field sports. The programs in that league are now almost 5 years old and expanding so quickly that my high school team had over 50 girls try out for 32 spots. When I tried out, anyone who wanted to be on the team made the team! In fact, I made the varsity team with the instructions: “run fast and chase after whoever has the ball” going into my first few games.

Although I’m still learning as I go, I’ve discovered that the typical perception of lacrosse is that it is a predominantly East Coast/ Midwest Prep School sport. My Californian friends know as much about lacrosse as my New York friends know about water polo (my New York friends after I explained water polo to them: “oh yeah, we don’t do that in New York”). But, in the very short amount of time I’ve played lacrosse, that’s begun to change. More and more West Coast high schools and universities are adding lacrosse programs, such as USC, and schools like Johns Hopkins and Northwestern are gaining national prominence as lacrosse powerhouses. Lacrosse is now the fastest growing sport in the United States and more and more people are at least able to recognize what a lacrosse stick looks like, even if they don’t understand the game.

The amount of media attention lacrosse is now getting is impressive; I even saw a poster for athletic clothing at Target featuring a woman carrying a lacrosse stick. She was holding a men’s stick so the picture was inaccurate, but that’s another blog post entirely. At the very least, Target ads reach tons of households nationwide. Considering the largest Target-shopping contingency is that of families, perhaps this will encourage more parents to enroll their children in a local lacrosse program. 

Lacrosse is a sport that is older than basketball, but it’s only now starting to really spread across the country. Hopefully I can continue to track the growth of lacrosse and how it can increase its prominence, especially on the West Coast. Oh and another fact no one seems to know: lacrosse is the national sport of Canada. Hockey was added later. I’m a huge hockey fan as well- I might even post about it sometime- but I promise I’m not Canadian.