E S I R The of Lacrosse by Collin Benedict staff writer
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Why North America’s oldest sport is seeing a spike in popularity
hile many sports in high school are popular and gather crowds’ and players’ attention, one sport often gets overlooked: lacrosse. Lacrosse is similar to many other sports, such as football and hockey because of the hitting and physical power required. Also to soccer because of the way the field is set up, and basketball by the way players position themselves to score points. Despite its lack of popularity in current sport culture, lacrosse is North America’s oldest sport. It was played as early as the 17th century by Native Americans, originally known as Stickball. Instead of just being played for fun, there were a variety of reasons these games were played: resolving intertribe disputes, festivals, bets, recreation, and strength training for young warriors. Up to 1,000 participants showed up to play at these events back in the day, unlike the modern number around 30 or 40. Jean de Brebeuf, a French Jesuit missionary working in St. Lawrence Valley in 1636, observed the game being played and gave the sport its modern name. Lacrosse increased in size and popularity in Canada throughout the 1800s and was observed by Queen Victoria of England in 1876. Lacrosse continued to grow, and leagues were formed around North America over the years. Making its way south from the Canadian border, lacrosse has recently entered the Traverse City area and brought Central and West students together. Because it is such a small sport, Traverse City has 34 // BGQ // October 2021
adopted a lacrosse team composed of student athletes from Central and West. The name for this team is TC United. There is a JV and Varsity team, and their season is in the spring with practices after school. Spencer Gerber ‘24, a TC United JV player, like many others, enjoys playing the newly-trending game. “I like playing offense, and I really like it when you dodge a defender and then score a goal — it’s a really good feeling,” Gerber explains. Mason Clark ‘24, is also a JV TC United player who began playing last year. “I have a lot of friends that play lacrosse, and I kinda got bored of the current sports I was playing, like soccer. Lacrosse is probably my favorite sport I’ve played so far,” he says. Transitions to new things are never easy, but lacrosse is known for having a welcoming community. “It’s just fun. We do a lot of fun things, like last week most of the JV players went down to Thirlby, and we played touch football, passed around for a couple of hours, ran some drills. It’s just pretty fun to hang out,” Clark recalls. Even though lacrosse shares many of the same aspects as other sports, there are some differences. “It’s a lot more fast paced than other sports, it never really stops like football and baseball. It’s got some different rules than other sports like if a ball goes out of bounds it’s not who threw the ball out of bounds, it’s whoever’s closest to the ball gets the ball,” Gerber explains. Every sport has easy and difficult aspects to it, including lacrosse. “The hardest part for me is probably all the cardio that it involves. You
