9781422284261

CHAPTER LACROSSE’S GREATEST MOMENTS

North Americans have been playing the game of lacrosse for unknown centuries. The game is a time-honored pursuit of the native people of the continent. The first European explorers of the lands that nowmake up Canada and the United States found that the native tribes would play for days at a time, using their crude sticks to chase the ball over great distances in their bare feet. Lacrosse has come a long way since settlers adopted and refined the native game into a modern sport that is much beloved and ardently followed at the high school and college levels in both countries. In the United States (according to U.S. Lacrosse, the sport’s U.S. governing body), the number of people playing lacrosse has risen steadily, from about 250,000 in 2001 to more than 650,000 in 2011, a 160 percent increase. Projections show that the number of total players could eclipse one million in 2016. From 2010 to 2011 alone, participation in youth lacrosse (players under age 15) was up 11.3 percent. On the college front, the National Collegiate Athletic Association also reports increased participation. There are more than 60 NCAA Division I men’s programs, and hundreds of others in Divisions II and III. Administrators point to the growing popularity at the youth level as a reason why they added varsity lacrosse at their school. With the addition of lacrosse in the Big Ten Conference in 2014, the sport is now sponsored in two of the Power Five conferences, along with longtime lacrosse powerhouse the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Big Ten, with its own national cable outlet, gives the sport unprecedented exposure. By luring 12-time NCAA finalist Maryland away from the ACC and adding Johns Hopkins University, the crown jewel of lacrosse schools, as an affiliate, the Big Ten gave itself instant credibility in the sport, and opened up hundreds more scholarships for the sport, ensuring lacrosse’s viability at lower levels.

As the college game continues to grow and thrive, so will the number of great moments it produces for fans that marvel at the skill of these players and the drama it can produce.

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