Lacrosse in the United States

Every year the United States puts together five teams to compete on an international level. There is a men's indoor team, and four outdoor teams: men's, women's, men's under 19 and women's under 19. Since the beginning of the men's World Lacrosse Championship in 1967, the United States national teams have won a total of thirty world championships.[8]

Lacrosse is a full field, 10 vs 10 contact sport. Each team has one goalie, three defenders, three mid fielders, and three attackmen. Throughout the contest, players attempt use their sticks to shoot the ball into the opponent's goal. At the end of the game, the team with the most goals wins. In college lacrosse, the games consist of four, fifteen minute quarters. This game length decreases to twelve minutes per quarter at the high school level, and decreases to ten minute per quarter at the little league level.[15]

Each team must have four players (a goalie and three defenders typically), on their defensive side of the field at all times. They must also have three players (usually three attackmen) on their offensive side of the ball at all times. The remaining three players (usually midfielders or middies) are free to roam the field as they please during the game. There are ten players on the field at a time. Still each team is allowed a maximum of seven players on their half of the field at a team and six players on their opponents’ side of the field at a time with the goalie being the extra man. Like hockey, substitutions are considered “on the fly” meaning that the players may enter and exit the field during gameplay assuming each team has a maximum of ten players on the field at the time. The game essentially has the same rules as hockey and is played both indoor (box lacrosse) and outdoor (full field).

Lacrosse started out as a tribal ritual for Native Americans to play before going to war. Differences between groups may have been settled through large, multi-day games covering expansive fields and many players.[16] The game was originally known as stickball. Ever since its creation, it has been considered a collision sport like football and hockey, not a contact sport like basketball and soccer. For a short amount of time, lacrosse was a full-fledged Olympic sport. After westward expansion, Europeans modified the game to make it much more alike the college and high school level game played today. When natives played lacrosse, dodging defenders was considered cowardly and was looked down upon. Since they were preparing for war, they were taught to embrace the pains involved with playing the game and fight through them. Throwing the ball from stick to stick was seen as a trick in the game, not a commonly utilized skill. Nowadays, these two trends have changed in a great way. Being able to skillfully pass from between teammates and dodge defenders to create open shots have become a pinnacle of today's current game.

Lacrosse in the US is currently one of the fastest growing sports in America.[17][18][19] With a faster growth rate than swimming, bowling, water polo, cross country, ice hockey, and soccer, there were 36,000 college lacrosse players in the United States as of 2015.[20][21][22][23] From 2009 to 2014 the growth rate for lacrosse has been 28%.[24] In 2009, 1,984 high schools across the country had sponsored a lacrosse program, but by 2014, 2,535 high schools across the country had sponsored a lacrosse program. Originally lacrosse was only played on the east coast, but it is starting to make a move out to the middle and west of the United States. 750,000 children across the United States played lacrosse in 2015. For junior league lacrosse, the growth rate has been 43% for boys and girls. Denver became the first non-east coast team in history to make it to the NCAA division 1 finals in 2015.