Lacrosse Now Is Tame Compared to Injun Game

To the Choctaw Indians who invented it, lacrosse was a contest of skill and guts. To an unfamiliar spectator today, it is a game where the players try harder to decapitate one another with webbed sticks than to score goals.

But today's lacrosse is only a tame version of the murderous brand the braves played.

The days when teams numbering 800 to 1000 nearly nude men battled to the death are long over. Nowadays each team has ten men, and all are equipped with protective helmets, gloves, and shoulder pads.

Modern lacrosse teams have a far easier time than their Indian predecessors. The braves played on a field with no boundaries, and the goals were set anywhere from 500 yards to a half-mile apart. The present field is only 110 yards long and 60 yards wide, divided at midfield.

"Restraining lines" cut each half of the field into two sectors. Each goal is in the middle of the field, 40 yards from the center stripe in a circle nine feet in diameter called the "crease."

Unlike Indian games which could last for days, the modern contest is only 60 minutes long, divided into four periods.

Today's team consist of three midfielders who can roam into any area of the field and boost the attack or backup the defense; three defensemen usually permitted only in the two sectors of the field closest to the goal they are protecting; and three attackmen, normally restricted to the two areas farthest from their own goal.

Each squad has a goalie, whose principal responsibility aside from protecting the goal is to "clear" the ball near the crease and pass off to the attack. He usually cannot go past midfield.

Lacrosse has evolved from a game of mass confusion to a contest of intricate strategy. It combines features most familiarly recognized in other sports which are in reality much younger. The speed of basketball with its picks, weaves, screens, and fast breaks, and the deft stick-handling of ice hockey both find usage in lacrosse.

And the close body-checking of American football is an integral part of defense. It retains for lacrosse the rough element that results in numerous bruised shoulders and broken noses.

Lacrosse has been around for at least 200 years, and intercollegiate lacrosse began over 90 years ago, And unlike the present time when lax champion teams come from either New York or Maryland, the first recognized college champ was, believe it or not sports fans, Harvard!