Chillax

August 12, 2014 1:21 PM

Balls to the Wall: Inside New York City's Thriving Lacrosse Culture
posted by josher71 (14 comments total)

A lot of those skills are pretty universal.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:22 PM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

IIRC some financial firms in the city have in-house lacrosse teams with players from financial feeder schools like Duke. So it's not too surprising that the sport would seep out into the rest of NYC. Honestly it seems like a weird fit to me, though... equipment is more expensive than soccer, the city already has a million basketball courts, etc.
posted by selfnoise at 1:49 PM on August 12, 2014

I grew up in central Virginia, where lacrosse, while established, really isn't picked up until high school. If you have an older sibling who played, then you might have learned to cradle and what not before then, but there weren't any leagues. I had a stick, but mainly for fooling around with friends who seriously played. Most of the public schools had teams, but the schedules also included private schools, too. It wasn't an alien sport in the least. That was in the late 90s.

I have since moved westward and have slowly watched it creep out to reach me in popularity. My college in Arkansas had a lacrosse club team established while I was there and now in my current town in Missouri, I see kid classes being offered in it next to the local YMCA-like facility. On top of that, when they decided to reboot Teen Wolf, they dropped basketball for lacrosse. I don't expect to see its popularity diminish any time soon, either.
posted by Atreides at 2:19 PM on August 12, 2014

As a Canadian, I find it very, very odd that in the US, Lacrosse is seen largely as a sport for rich, white, urban douchebags.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:22 PM on August 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

Indeed. Up here, it's for poor, white, rural douchebags.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:29 PM on August 12, 2014

Hrmm, where I'm from in Northern BC, it's mostly played by native kids, who are unfortunately often poor, generally rural, and may or may not be douchebags, in accordance with the usual ratio of douchebags to non-douchebags in any given population.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:34 PM on August 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is lacrosse, as in one of Canada's official sports, not the Quebecois slang. I assume. Though the latter would make a reading of the OP that might give me the giggles.
posted by clvrmnky at 2:34 PM on August 12, 2014

I went to HS in Brooklyn. We had a lacrosse team, but we always knew the even preppier Kids than us out on Long Island would always out-score us.

So we just concentrated on putting a shoulder down and laying some people out flat.

Rather than "Man/Ball" drills (ie "I got one, You get the other), we would joke about calling "Man/Man" in games. Nothing illegal, no slashing, just put a shoulder down and claim some of that spare air rattling around in his lungs.

Ah, good times…

Until my senior year. New coach who was a lax star in college & wanted to de-thug the team. I spent 1 game on the bench as the only senior defenseman watching freshman midfielders play short-stick D.

Turned in my pads the next day & instead worked the window at the pizza & Knish truck just outside the gates to pay off my tab till graduation.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:52 PM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Call me a North American homer, but I prefer the sports developed here - baseball, gridiron football, hockey, basketball and lacrosse. I'd much rather lacrosse took off as the "fifth sport", I never really understood why it's a point of politics for some that soccer is for enlightened world citizen types, when it's just another legacy of European imperial hegemony and cultural homogeniety. I like local sports with strong traditions and large, cult followings - Irish hurling, Aussie rules football, lacrosse.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:12 PM on August 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

Lacrosse is a decidedly different beast north of the border. It's kind of cool, but Victoria BC is home to one of the top box lacrosse teams in Canada.

Lacrosse really is Canada's national sport (not hockey) and it is the only sport where First Nations (aka "Native American") players are a major force. If anyone ever calls Canadians mild or polite, just watch a Shamrocks game on YouTube.
posted by Nevin at 4:47 PM on August 12, 2014

When my youngest is done playing I'll be happy if he gets through it without a concussion.

Concussion is the #1 injury for goalies.

Seems like every team he's been on lost at least one kid to concussions and he can't play again. I coached a very bright first baseman in 7th grade who was pretty dim in high school from head injuries. Nice kid, but his brain's not as good now.

It's not the contact with the other player, it's the head bouncing on the ground, in the majority of those cases.

OK. So I'm done with my daily worrying.
posted by surplus at 4:49 PM on August 12, 2014

The first time I saw two laxers on the 2 train, I sneakily snapped a photo, giddy with delight that there may be somewhere I could play lacrosse in New York City.

Yup. Confirms my prejudice that laxers have no knack for grammar, nor their editors neither.

(I played lacrosse at a public high school in California. We were real good until we played the public high school from the next, poorer town over.)
posted by chavenet at 4:53 PM on August 12, 2014

We used to call the box variety boxla when I was a kid. Lax? Laxers? Lawn -> off!
Plus, Shamrocks? Ha! It's Salmonbellies and their 24 Mann Cups all the way!
posted by Zedcaster at 5:05 PM on August 12, 2014

In the traditional aboriginal Canadian version, each team consisted of about 100 to 1,000 men on a field that stretched from about 500 meters to 3 kilometers long.[3] These lacrosse games lasted from sunup to sundown for two to three days straight. These games were played as part of ceremonial ritual, a kind of symbolic warfare, to give thanks to the Creator or Master.[4]

-- Wikipedia

So basically, the original Great Outdoor Fight.
posted by pwnguin at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]