March 3, 2010
Supporting growth
by Chuck Jaffe/
I recently sat between two high school lacrosse games at a local indoor facility. There was a boys game on my right and a girls game on my left.
Boys and girls lacrosse are one sport, but two distinctly different games; on this day, the action provided an alarming view of the future for both, because the biggest issues for each are the same.
It’s no secret that lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in America, and that the numbers say the game is taking off all around us. Yet as the game grows, so does its key concern, namely that it lacks the infrastructure — great officiating and coaching — to properly support all of that expansion. The consequences of growth without a support structure can be big, far beyond wins and losses to the kind of ugly incidents that forever mar a sport in the eyes of many outsiders.
The boys game that day had experienced officials with inexperienced coaches. The coaches urged the players to hack it up and the game devolved into a shoving match with stick swinging, where every defender was so eager to line up a big hit or a whack that they missed the available checks and the chance to stop the ball. The few wild chops that landed were dangerous, to the point where I heard one player’s father say “Sometimes when you watch a game like this, you wonder if your kid would be safer if you just sent him into a dark alley. At least he’d be prepared for trouble because he’d know there are no rules to protect him.”
The refs threw one flag after another to keep things in control, but the coaches never adapted or changed; they insisted everything flagged would be legal come springtime and “real games.”
Meanwhile, the girls game had coaches and an umpire with a moderate level of experience. This game quickly got chippy, with some wild stick swings and dangerous checks, and no support at all from the umpire, whose motto was “It’s indoor ball, so I’m letting them play.” With nothing being called in a close, competitive game, the coaches encouraged increasingly dangerous and illegal play. Players got cross-checked — a big point of emphasis for women’s umpires this year — and offenders got away with it, so the victims started hitting back; eventually, there was enough pushing and shoving that you might have thought a hockey game had broken out.
The problem in the boys game was with the coaches, unable to adapt to a game that was well officiated; the problem in the girls game was the officiating, allowing the players to get out of hand.
Both issues frustrated the audience. It wasn’t the typical “I want my kid’s team to win” bravura, it was a pleading to “Keep the players safe.”
And while it would be easy to discount the action as off-season indoor ball, the truth is that what happened on those fields will be repeated during the regular season. The boys felt their actions were justified because the coaches encouraged it; the girls learned that the more chippy the play got, the less effective the opponent was.
Players do what they have been taught, or what they have seen work. If that group of boys were to play with lesser refs, they’d be in for a donnybrook; and unless those girls get an umpire who tightens up on the checks, someone will have to get hurt to finally force the ump to blow the whistle.
Despite playing with sticks, lacrosse actually has one of the lowest injury rates among high school sports. That’s as it should be; players have a weapon in their hands, but they’ll use it properly if they have good coaching, umpiring and sportsmanship. For both genders, this is a game that is about playing under control.
When that control is lost — regardless of who is responsible — the game suffers. Today, it’s a wild stick swing or a bad habit, tomorrow that out-of-control action becomes the norm, eventually the bad consequences surface.
Yes, improved equipment makes it easy to adopt a no-harm, no-foul mentality. But things have gotten so bad in girls lacrosse in New York state that the high school athletic association is considering whether it should mandate helmets, a move that forever alters a beautiful game, and not for the better. And studies show that the injury rate is on the rise, rather than holding steady.
It’s enough that lacrosse is increasingly getting the same reaction from parents that was once reserved for football, namely mothers and fathers who don’t want their kids to play youth ball. It will be worse if the players who take the plunge wind up paying a steep physical price for getting involved.
Lacrosse started as the “little brother of war” but it also was about honor and respect. When coaches forget that, players get away from it and officials allow it, the entire game suffers. If it’s allowed to continue, the future of the game will be less exciting and much more ugly.
