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Where’s The Love?

Leagueoftheirown

This isn’t going to be easy.  There’s some rumors going the around the playground that lacrosse isn’t a game for everyone.  Not in the A League of Their Ownif it wasn’t hard everyone would do it” sense, but more in the “those without a trust fund need not apply” kind of way.

Time to take a long hard look in the mirror and see if there’s any truth to these rumors.

Our first bully – jitterygoat.com

“Lacrosse is a violent sport. It’s like hockey with no ice. White boys run around on a grass field with sticks taking out their frustrations for Mumsy and Daddy sending them to private school and sheltering their lives from being mugged, picked on, and ridiculed by normal kids.”

Lacrosse Or Football Which Way To World Peace?

There’s no denying that many of the top high school and college programs are at schools with an annual tuition larger than a small mortgage.  Even so, the growth of the game speaks to its desire to move beyond this stereotype.  Places like Bonners Ferry (Idaho), and Hermiston (Oregon) are currently fielding squads and I’m positive none of those kids refer to mom as “Mumsy.”

Throw in concentrated efforts to introduce the sport to non-traditional areas through US Lacrosse’s BRIDGE program, and statements like these begin to look foolish.  Yes, lacrosse has an elitist past, but attempting to boil today’s game down to that one characteristic is ignorant.

Embellishing stereotypes isn’t enough for the game’s critics, who often go after the athletic capability of the players themselves.

“The appeal of soccer and lacrosse to the intellectuals is easy to figure. No body with any real athletic talent wants to play those games anyway. And those intellectual eggheads are usually the last or the ones never picked in a game of school yard football. They can’t throw or catch a football and they run funny too. They pick a sport nobody else wants to see or play and proclaim it as superior.”

Lacrosse Or Football Which Way To World Peace?

And this gem from Mike Roche, former sports columnist at Boise State’s school paper:

“If some little league drop out can get a lacrosse scholarship, you can’t call it the next big thing. If you can hand Reggie Bush a stick and two seconds later see a superstar, you can’t call it the next big thing.”

Say what? Lacrosse is the next big thing?

Browsing the website of our defending national champions and randomly clicking on five names, I found that all five Syracuse players had played a sport in high school other than lacrosse.  Some had even received honors.  Oh, by the way, ever heard of Patrick Kerney?  To suggest that lacrosse is an alternative sport full of non-athletes is simply ignorant.

The biggest question in all of this, however, is why people are so eager to take a shot at lacrosse.  What about the game generates such harsh criticism from people who have never even played it?

If you ask me, this is the culprit:

Picture 3

And this doesn’t help either….

[fvplayer src=”https://youtube.com/watch?v=zTvygEVd9HA”]