How popular is Lacrosse in your city/area?

[HedleyLamarr]

It's growing widely in Georgia. All of my friends that used to play baseball play lacrosse now. I hate that I can't talk to anyone aboout baseball. I don't mind Lacrosse though. I was going to play, but I couldn't get the equipment in time for sign-ups.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves...it might be growing in high schools (How many lacrosse programs in the state...maybe 20?), but the general reaction to the sport in Atlanta would be "la-what?".

On that post I made about which teams are most popular in Atlanta, lacrosse would rank below "Women's Sports".....

[Rockstar Matt]

At my High School, Redondo Union in Los Angeles County, it's really popular. A bigger draw then basketball actually. And, among our rivals' (Mira Costa, Palos Verdes) it can get pretty heated.

[missouri tigers]

Its almost non existent in St. Louis. Other than a few private high schools, many don't have a Lacrosse team.

[DelayedPenalty]

Pro and college lacrosse is non-existent in Michigan. High school lacrosse is gaining in popularity. My alma mater (do they call high school's alma mater, or is that just college? Anyways...) just got boys and girls varsity lacrosse last year.

Michigan's adding varsity lacrosse next year. Their club team's won a ton of national championships and now they're taking the step to go D-1 in the NCAA

Very cool, i wasn't aware of that. I should have mentioned, varsity college lacrosse is non-existent. Lots of places have club teams.

[bosrs1]

La-what?

Seriously though, it's played at the colleges I think around here in SD, but no one really cares. This is a football and baseball town first with soccer distant third. Lacrosse might as well be Tiddlywinks.

[Still MIGHTY]

Lacrosse is actually decently popular in Orange County.

There are more than plenty of youth teams, and high school lacrosse is really on the rise. 7 years ago now (Jeez, that long?) one of my friends asked me if I wanted to start playing lacrosse and make a club team for the high school. Two years later after numerous petitions to the school board and such, we got lacrosse to be a CIF-sanctioned, school-sponsored sport in our district and OC. There aren't enough schools for a full CIF playoff yet, however they do have an LA-OC Championship game after small intracounty playoff tourneys.

At the college level, Chapman University in Orange has an extremely successful club team as does UC-Santa Barbara up north. USC and UCLA have teams, but not as good surprisingly enough... Out here at Arizona State, we have an extremely successful club program as well.

Professionally it's been kind of a bust. There was the Anaheim Storm of the NLL a few years back at the Pond, but they never took hold even when they had the two older Powell brothers (Casey and Ryan). My coach in high school actually got them to come to a practice of ours one time, and as the goalie I got to be the guinea pig. Great experience... Then there was the LA Riptide of the MLL at the Home Depot Center, and while decently successful on the field, they are now departed.

And bosrs1, from what I've experience, lacrosse is actually quite popular in North SD county. Fallbrook, San Marcos, and Torrey Pines always had a successful team as well.

[chrysleraspen08]

In Southwestern Ontario, lacrosse is popular to play for people, but I don't know about watching. There are a couple of big (or bigger) NLL names (most notably Colin Doyle).

[Jer15]

In Southwestern Ontario, lacrosse is popular to play for people, but I don't know about watching. There are a couple of big (or bigger) NLL names (most notably Colin Doyle).

What are you talking about? A couple? I challenge you to have a look at the NLL rosters and see how many players come from Ontario. You will be shocked if this is your opinion.

In fact, I'd guess something like 80% of the players from the NLL come from either BC or Ontario.

As for watching, hard to argue. I don't get it though. The Rock, and for that matter the Bandits (yes I know they are in NY but come on, they are a 5 min drive from Ontario) both have good attendance numbers.

I'm interested to see what the numbers are after TSN airs the game on Sunday.

[cameroncrazie07]

Up here in New York, there are about 100 lacrosse teams, boys and girls. WAy more lacrosse and soccer teams than baseball.

[WJMorris3]

In terms of New Jersey:

Of the 341 public schools affiliated with the NJSIAA, 143 (41.9%) field a boys' lacrosse team and 150 (44.0%) field a girls' lacrosse team.

Of the 59 private schools affiliated with the NJSIAA that admit males, 32 (54.2%) field a boys' lacrosse team.

Of the 67 private schools affiliated with the NJSIAA that admit females, 31 (46.3%) field a girls' lacrosse team.

(There are 77 private schools affiliated; 10 are male-only and 18 are female-only.)

I consider there to be 95 schools affiliated with the NJSIAA to be in South Jersey (these are schools that play in the Burlington County Scholastic League, Cape-Atlantic League, Colonial Conference, Olympic Conference, or Tri-County Conference, OR independent schools that play in a town whose public school plays in one of these leagues.)

Of the 82 public schools involved, 26 (31.7%) field a boys' team and 33 (40.2%) field a girls' team.

12 private schools are available for each gender. 7 boys' teams (58.3%) and 7 girls' teams (58.3%) exist.

[rvrdgsfn]

Lacrosse is slowly picking up in the counties near Richmond, 2 of the high schools in my county have just started a lacrosse program & word is that is planning to expand to the other high schools as well. Plus there was that rumor that the former owner of the 2nd renegades was going to start up a league, but it kind of fell apart.

[illwauk]

As far as high schools, most of the suburban schools and some of the private schools in Milwaukee have teams, but that's pretty much the extent of it in Wisconsin. Some quick googling shows that Marquette is set to add varsity lacrosse in 2013 and UW-Madison has a club team, but the fact that I had to google this information should tell you how popular it is around here.

[tBBP]

I really ain't know jack about the sport until I came up on a Morgan State concept for my HBCU Project concept series some years back, wherein the football team also had a tie to the school's lacrosse team. It wasn't until I moved to Maryland I actually bothered to pay attention to the sport and try to figure out what the heck was going on. (Of course, being that lacrosse is the team sport of Maryland--and that I lived in Anne Arundel County, which may as well be the epicenter of the game--if ever there was a time to do that, it'd have been then.) And then I moved out here...but the lacrosse curiosity stayed out there. Someone upthread mentioned lacrosse is picking up popularity out here in the Indy area. I hadn't seen anything remotely close to interest in the game until I read that post...and lo and behold the very next day I get stuck on the road behind a minivan with a bunch of high school lacrosse team stickers plastered all over the back of it. And then today I find myself enthralled in the Maryland @ North Carolina game on ESPN earlier.

One of these days I might try my hand at it--seems like it'd be fun flinging a little ball around with what basically amounts to a fishing net. (Although I'm sure the game's much more difficult than it looks.)

[camly]

In southern NH we don't really care. We are basketball folk.

baseball is still better

[Sport]

It was big at my high school (Dublin Jerome), and our team was pretty good. They won the state my junior year and lost the state title game my senior year. This was annoying because I was on the baseball team and they seemed to always steal our thunder. I got nothing against Lacrosse, but outside of watching the National Championship game it's not really on my radar.

The reason our team was good was because all of the best players in town "Miami Heated" it and colluded to open enroll at the new high school, which opened in 2004. It was a stacked team that was stacked by the players. The parents were okay with this. That's Dublin, Ohio for ya.

[DaRadniz29]

I grew up in San Jose and live in the Sacramento Area and have not seen LAx take off. I mean San Francisco Dragons were a part of the MLL but they folded. So I would say in the Bay Area it's less popular than MLS.

I lived in Delaware for a while and got to know about Maryland and how it's the team sport, and watched quite a few Johns Hopkins games.

I enjoyed watching the NCAA Semi-Finals and Championships last weekend. Also a couple of weeks ago, I came across the Indoor/Box LAx Championship and that was more exciting in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, outdoor/Field LAx is exciting in it's own right. Like baseball is exciting in it's own right. I'm more of a ice hockey guy myself, though I think a few rule changes could help the NHL improve. But I still enjoy watching LAx.

I'm in the process of developing a new sport currently titled "Field Ball" and I used the Lacrosse Field layout for a template outline for Field Ball. Field Ball is similar to basketball, handball, soccer, football and lacrosse. By that I mean it has similar aspects. Some may say it's just a combo of those sports after reading the rules to Field Ball, but like someone said every team sports is derived from other team sports - while using key differences to separate into a stand-alone sport. Field Ball is played on rectangular field teams of 9 players per team(8 position players and 1 Goalie) with a size 4 and/or size 5 soccer ball and the object is to kick or throw the ball into the opponents rectangular goal (6ft. W, 5ft. H, and 4 ft. deep)

The Best part of Field Ball is all you need is yourself, and maybe some athletic type shorts.

I'll see if there's a place I can post the rules I've come up with and a couple of field diagrams.

Anyway, LAx is definitely on the rise, but not all that popular here in the Bay Area nor Sacramento area that I know of. As for the snobbish types being the main players of LAx, I really don't know if that's necessarily true, because snobbish can be viewed as many different things by many different people.

(Mouthguard might be a good idea and may some cleats - but not a necessity)

[ltjets21]

It's huge in my area NJ. You either love or hate lacrosse

[The Nation]

Question: Why doesn't Maryland have a NLL team? Is it because indoor lacrosse is looked down upon?

[Don]

Question: Why doesn't Maryland have a NLL team? Is it because indoor lacrosse is looked down upon?

Used to have the Washington Power years ago but then they moved to Colorado. 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore would be perfect for an NLL team.

[Discrim]

I used to watch the MILL back in ESPN2's early days, and catch an MLL game every now and then. As for Wisco's lax scene, as illwauk put it, in spite of the fact that one of our cities takes its name from the sport, there aint one. Hell, volleyball has a bigger presence (and not just girls either).