“I STARTED AS A DAD WHO HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THE SPORT BUT QUICKLY SAW THE POTENTIAL AND EXCITEMENT THAT DROVE THE SPORT. I BEGAN DOING WHATEVER I COULD TO HELP, AND I NEVER LOOKED BACK.” – Josh Friedman
SAM FRIEDMAN POSITION: ATTACK TEAM: MAVERICKS
42 mobilebaymag.com | august 2019
weekend’s scorching tournament in Louisiana. “I’m sure today’s practice will be a lot of stretching,” Stormi laughs, alluding to the players’ fatigue. The casual observer wouldn’t pick up on that fact, however, as the boys squat, run and catch with game-day gusto. Just by looking at the sheer number of players, it’s hard to imagine that, throughout the Bay area, little is known about the sport.
A History of Warriors The first mention of lacrosse dates back to 1100 AD, a time when Native Americans “played” the game as a kind of symbolic warfare. The “games” were ceremonial in nature, with pre-match rituals identical to Indian warpath preparations. Tournaments would last up to three days and consisted of teams of 100 to 1,000 men apiece on a field several miles long. When French missionaries visited present-day Ontario in 1637, they observed the game and named it “la crosse,” which means “the stick” in French. Although mostly peaceful in nature, the games also served to vent aggression. In the late 18th century, violence broke out in a famous match between the Creek and Choctaw tribes over the rights of a beaver pond. (The Creeks won.) Centuries later, lacrosse, or as it is sometimes called, “lax,” is now more a hybrid of soccer, hockey and football, with its objective being to keep the opposing team from scoring. Warrior-like traits still prevail, with the permissive use of “stick checks,” a controlled stick-on-stick hit used to dislodge the ball from the opponent’s stick pocket. Men’s lacrosse also allows for physical contact, or “body checks” (think football tackles with restrictions). There’s no such contact for women, however, as their rules vary. In the book, “Lacrosse: A History of the Game,” Russian-born Rosabelle Sinclair, who established the first U.S. women’s lacrosse team, describes the difference between the sexes: “Lacrosse, as women play it, is an orderly pastime that has little in common with the men’s tribal warfare version … It’s true that the object in both men’s and women’s lacrosse is to send a ball through a goal by means of the racket, but whereas men resort to brute strength, the women depend solely on skill.”