Cardinal Points

Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Katie Khouri Lacrosse has been growing in the Northeast, especially in colleges

Athletes across the nation have been more apt to pick up their lacrosse stick rather than a baseball bat lately.

America's past time is starting to give way to lacrosse, which has been rapidly growing in popularity.

For those who aren't familiar with the sports of lacrosse, think of a hybrid between hockey and soccer.

Players carry a small ball in a net at the end of the stick. Passing, hitting, cradling, faceoffs and picking up ground balls are all elements of the game, with the victor being the team which puts more balls past the opposing team's goalie.

According to an article in Sports Illustrated, author Frank Dedford explains that lacrosse is actually one of the oldest of North American sports.

Lacrosse was named by a French Missionary visiting Native Americans during pre-colonial times, who noticed the sticks looked similar to a bishop's crosier.

Lacrosse surfaced in American colleges in the early 1900s, at universities such as Johns Hopkins and Yale.

The sport became more of a hit in the New England-area colleges, while Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins would continually prove to be a power-house in college lacrosse.

In the 1990s, lacrosse made its jump into organized professional leagues. Indoor and outdoor teams were formed in cities such as Denver and Toronto.

The three days of the men's NCAA Division I tournament last year tallied a number of 125,000 fans in the home site of Philadelphia.

The bigger, more expensive southern and western Division I schools boast a plethora of varsity level sports such as football, basketball, baseball - even golf, tennis, and cheerleading are sports at some D-I schools. Lacrosse, however, is not.

Schools in the southern/western region of the country such as: USC, UCF, Texas, Georgia, Florida State, Auburn, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Colorado and Alabama do not have a varsity level lacrosse program.

This is a clustered sport throbbing with hype in the Northeastern sector of the country.

In New York, Long Island has been known as a power-house for lacrosse.

The sport has taken off on the island and has a heavy concentration of players.

Here at Plattsburgh State, 16 of our lacrosse players' hometowns are on Long Island, with one player formerly playing for Long Island University's C.W. Post campus.

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