College lacrosse 101: A beginner’s guide to watching lacrosse

Want to start watching college lacrosse?  Read this beginner’s guide to learn everything you need to know to about the “fastest sport on two feet.”

If you’ve happened to flip on ESPN or ESPN U this spring, you’ve likely seen college lacrosse on the channel. If you’ve never seen a game before, you may be intrigued, but also a tad confused as to why a bunch of people with sticks are running around fighting over a tiny rubber ball.

If you fall into this casual viewer category, fear not. FanSided has put together a beginner’s guide to watching college lacrosse and provides you with everything you need to know to enhance your viewing experience.

It’s fast-paced and involves a lot of scoring

Lacrosse is often called the fastest team sport on two feet (sorry ice hockey fans, skates don’t count). Now it didn’t receive this nickname because it has the speediest athletes (though lacrosse players are some of the most well-rounded athletes you’ll find—just ask former Penn State lacrosse player and Super Bowl-winning wide receiver Chris Hogan).

It received this nickname because of its fast gameplay, which has helped the sport to grow at a rapid rate in both participation and commercial exposure. Teams change possession usually every 30 to 90 seconds with some “fast break” goals occurring mere seconds after a face-off ensues.

Furthermore, games usually involve around 20-30 combined goals and teams often go on multi-goal runs late in games, which make many contests tight throughout the entirety of the game. If you want high scoring and back and forth play, lacrosse is the sport for you.

It’s the oldest sport in North America

While baseball, may have the distinction of being “America’s Pastime,” it is not the oldest sport created in North America. That honor belongs to lacrosse, which didn’t even start out as a sport, to begin with.

Lacrosse traces its origins back to Native Americans who treated the game originally referred to as “stickball” as both a religious ritual and a way to physically prepare tribes for battle. The Iroquois nation is believed to be the first group to have played lacrosse and other tribes in eastern North America soon followed.

Games were played for days and often involved from as little as 100 people to as many as 100,000. It wasn’t until the 1630’s that French-Canadian missionaries adapted the sport and began referring to it as “la crosse” due to the sticks resembling a bishop’s “cross”.

Finally, in 1856, a Canadian dentist named Dr. William George Beers founded the Montreal Lacrosse Club and introduced new rules, such as reducing the number of participants on the field at a time and the use of a rubber ball. This new form of the game would eventually develop into the sport it is today.

The gameplay is more similar to hockey and basketball than you may think

While the physicality of the sport is often compared to that of football, lacrosse actually shares many more similarities to hockey and basketball.

The objective of the sport is similar to hockey, in that players attempt to score goals by using their sticks to propel a small object into a net. Similar to hockey, you aren’t allowed to whack opponents with your stick on any part of their body other than their stick or their gloves. If you do, you’ll get called for a slashing penalty (though referees tend to be more liberal with their calls at the college level).

Other similar components include goaltenders in net, face-offs after scoring possessions, a penalty box and man-advantage opportunities (called a “man-up” instead of a power play), though they last only 30 seconds to 3 minutes depending on the severity.

The sport is also similar to basketball in that there are similar defensive sets, pick and rolls, and as of 2019, a shot clock. However, in lacrosse, the shot clock is 80 seconds and starts from a change of possession. Teams are also only allowed a maximum of 20 seconds to advance the ball over the midfield line, and then have the remaining time on the clock to get a shot off that must either hit a goal pipe, the goaltender, or score.

Additionally, while there are 10 players on the field of play for each team at a time, each team can have no more than six on their offensive side and seven on their defensive side (including a goaltender) which makes gameplay much more similar to basketball than other sports with a similarly high number of players on the field like football and soccer.

This doesn’t mean lacrosse is without some nuances. For example, when a ball goes out of play on a shot (as determined by the referee) possession is awarded to the team with a player closest to where the ball went out of bounds when it left the field of play. This allows for offenses to be less conservative with their shots since they can regain possession immediately after a failed attempt.

Overall, these noted similarities make the game more accessible to a casual viewer who’s looking for something different to watch once college football and basketball enter their offseason.

The men’s and women’s game are very different

When it comes to lacrosse, the men’s and women’s versions of the sport are as different as they come. For starters, women’s lacrosse has stronger ties to Europe than North America, with the first ever organized women’s game being played in Scotland in the 1980s.

An obvious difference between men’s and women’s lacrosse is that men wear more padding and headgear due to the men’s game allowing bodychecking and more liberal stick checking. While in women’s lacrosse, players must rely solely on solid body position and well-timed stick checks.

Other differences include the placement of the goals being farther apart from each other on a women’s fields, women’s teams fielding 12 players on the field at a time as opposed to 10 players in men’s lacrosse, and the pockets of women’s sticks having much shallower pockets than the men’s sticks.

These differences actually allow for an even faster style of play with more up and down the field action.

Some other less obvious differences are that in women’s lacrosse there are no man advantage scenarios, and teams are instead awarded better field position at the restart of play when the other team is penalized. Additionally, face-offs are taken at standing up position, where men face-off from the ground.

Despite these major differences, both men’s and women’s lacrosse present an entertaining viewing experience for the fans.

It has its own version of the Heisman trophy

Every May, college lacrosse honors the top college players in both men’s and women’s lacrosse and is essentially its version of college football’s Heisman trophy.

The award is known as the Tewaaraton (the Mohawk name for lacrosse) and it is awarded by the Tewaaraton foundation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.

The trophy itself depicts a Mohawk native with a lacrosse stick and the award as a whole does a great job of honoring the modern game while paying homage to lacrosse’s rich Native American history.

It’s exciting to watch

Okay so we may be a little biased with this one, but lacrosse is truly fun to watch. As the sport has evolved, players have become stronger and faster and developed more creative ways of scoring. It’s no longer uncommon to see a behind the back goal or point-blank save on SportsCenter’s Top Plays.

Furthermore, thanks to some new rule changes, such as once again allowing diving shots, the plays have become even more stunning. Don’t believe us? Check out some of 2019’s best plays so far and do yourself a favor and check out a college lacrosse game this spring.