Among Native Americans, there were many versions of what we now call lacrosse. Players in some tribes used two sticks, one in each hand. Women and men sometimes competed together on the same teams, but women had their own form of the sport in some areas.
The Cherokees called the sport "the little brother of war" because it was considered excellent military training. A team consisted of hundreds, even thousands, of players, often an entire village or tribe, the goals were often miles apart, and a game might last as long as three days. Since most players couldn't get anywhere near the ball, they concentrated on using the stick to injure opponents.
The Six Tribes of the Iroquois, in what is now southern Ontario and upstate New York, called their version of the game "baggataway" or "tewaraathon". It was much more organized than in most areas of the country. There were 12 to 15 players per team, and the goals were about 120 feet apart.
According to most accounts, the first Europeans to see baggataway being played were French explorers who thought the stick resembled a bishop's crozier--la crosse, in French--so the sport was given a new name. However, the French played a form of field hockey that was called jeu de la crosse, and that's a much more likely origin of the name.
Early in the 19th century, Europeans in Canada began playing the game. Montreal's Olympic Club organized a team in 1844, specifically to play a match against a Native American team. Similar games were played in 1848 and 1851.
However, the first step toward turning lacrosse into a genuinely organized, modern sport came when the Montreal Lacrosse Club, founded in 1856, developed the first written rules.
George Beers of the MLC rewrote the rules thoroughly in 1867. His rules called for 12 players per team, and named the positions: Goal, point, cover point, first defense, second defense, third defense, centre, third attack, second attack, first attack, out home, and in home.
Beers, who is now known as " the father of lacrosse," also replaced the hair-stuffed deerskin ball with a hard rubber ball and designed a stick that was better suited to catching the ball and throwing it accurately.
Canada's National Lacrosse Association, which was also established in 1867, quickly adopted the new rules. The same year, a team made up of Caughnawaga Indians went to England and played a match for Queen Victoria. The sport became quite popular in Bristol, Cheshire, Lancashire, London, Manchester, and Yorkshire, and the English Lacrosse Union was organized in 1892.
Lacrosse had pretty well died out in the northern United States by the middle of the nineteenth century, but it was revived in upstate New York during the late 1860s by the Onondaga tribe, influenced by the St. Regis tribe, which was among those still active in Canada.
White players in Upstate New York began to play lacrosse about 1868, and the sport soon spread to Metropolitan New York, where several teams were organized during the 1870s. New York University and Manhattan College played the first U. S. intercollegiate game on November 22, 1877, and other colleges in the Northeast soon took up the sport, including Boston University, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and Stevens Institute.
The U. S. Amateur Lacrosse Association, founded in 1879, adopted the Canadian rules. Seven colleges formed the first Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association three years later. That was succeeded in 1905 by the Intercollegiate Lacrosse League, which changed its name to the U. S. Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA) in 1929.
Ice hockey and lacrosse have always been closely connected. In fact, the original rules of ice hockey, written in 1867, were patterned after those of lacrosse, and most hockey players in Canada also played lacrosse.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was a major hockey-playing college in the 1890s. Lacrosse was introduced there in 1893 by some students who had seen the sport on Long Island, and it quickly became very popular throughout Baltimore. Programs were developed for all age groups by 1900 and the city has been a hotbed of lacrosse ever since.
Although there are large areas of the country where lacrosse is virtually unknown, it has become quite popular in many other areas, including Long Island, Upstate New York, Indiana, Michigan, Northern California, Oregon, Florida, Texas, and the Atlanta region.
Lacrosse action
A national collegiate champion was chosen by committee until 1971, when the NCAA began conducting its annual championship tournament. The Division III championship was added in 1980. The NCAA Division II championship was conducted from 1974 through 1982 and it was resumed in 1993 after a twelve-year hiatus.
At many schools, lacrosse is a club sport--that is, it's run by students independently of the athletic department. Club teams even coexist with varsity teams at quite a few colleges. The USILA conducts a national championship tournament for college club teams. The National Collegiate Lacrosse League, founded in 1991 as an organization of about 70 schools with club teams, also has a championship tournament.
Since 1934, the U. S. Lacrosse Association has conducted the U. S. Open tournament for post-collegiate club teams.
In the U.S., as of the 2011-12 academic year, there were 61 NCAA-sanctioned Division I men's lacrosse teams, 46 Division II men's lacrosse teams and 189 Division III men's lacrosse teams, as well as 92 Division I women's lacrosse teams, 67 Division II women's lacrosse teams, and 216 Division III women's lacrosse teams. There were also 28 men's programs and 17 women's programs at two-year community colleges organized by the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and a growing number of National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) four-year small college programs.
As of 2011-12, there were 213 collegiate men's club teams competing through the Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA), including most major universities in the United States without NCAA Men's programs, organized into two divisions and ten conferences. Schools that feature a Division 1 program typically play in Division I, where schools who have NCAA Division II, Division III, or NAIA distinction play in Division II of the MCLA. The MCLA is structured to give the high number of lacrosse players playing at the high school level, an outlet to play competitive collegiate lacrosse regardless of their location. High caliber programs competing in the MCLA often operate as "virtual varsity" teams, often competing against NCAA Division II and III teams. The MCLA currently holds its national championship tournament at Dick's Sporting Goods Park located in the Denver suburb of Commerce City, Colorado. This tournament is a 16-team tournament for both Division I and Division II programs and features a live broadcast of semi-final and championship contests.
In 2011-12, there were another 127 schools with men's club teams in the National College Lacrosse League (NCLL), again, often at schools with existing NCAA programs. As of 2011-12, there were also 266 collegiate club teams for women organized by the Women's Collegiate Lacrosse Associates (WCLA).
