What is Lacrosse?
Lacrosse is a team sport where players try to shoot a solid rubber ball into the opposition goal using a stick with a net on its end.
Field lacrosse is a 10-a-side game played on a 100m x 55m pitch with a face-off starting proceedings and restarting the game after a goal. Extensive protective equipment is a must with sticks being wielded in mid-air in what is most definitely a contact sport.
But the version being contested at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games is World Lacrosse Sixes which is played on a 70m x 36m pitch featuring goals 10m in from the end-lines.
By whom, where and when was Lacrosse invented?
Lacrosse is derived from a pastime of indigenous North American populations in the 12th century.
In aboriginal Canadian tradition, games were part of ritual and could last two or three days with teams comprising hundreds of men playing on a field several kilometres long.
Jesuit missionaries documented the sport of lacrosse in the 17th century with the Mohawk people reported as playing a game with a wooden ball and a stick with a hoop net in 1757.
Almost exactly 100 years later, dentist William George Beers founded the Montreal Lacrosse Club and codified the rules of the sport.
What are the rules of Lacrosse?
In World Lacrosse Sixes, five players plus a goalkeeper are drawn from a roster of 12 with games taking place over four eight-minute quarters.
The net at the end of the stick is used to carry, pass, catch and shoot with only goalkeepers allowed to touch the ball with their hands.
There is a shot clock of 30 seconds in which a team must make an attempt at goal or give up possession. A turnover also occurs if a team returns to its own half having moved into the attacking half.
Minor fouls result in a player being sent to the penalty box for 30 seconds with major fouls triggering a one-minute suspension.
At the end of the match, the team with most goals wins. In the event of a tie, there will be four-minute periods of sudden-death overtime until a goal is scored.
Lacrosse and the Olympics
Field lacrosse was played at previous Olympic Games but World Lacrosse Sixes is the propsed sport at Los Angeles 2028.
Men’s lacrosse was part of the St. Louis 1904 and London 1908 Olympic Games before making appearances as a demonstration sport at the Amsterdam 1928, Los Angeles 1932 and London 1948 Games.
Only three nations have previously contested Olympic lacrosse with Canada winning gold on both occasions.
Canada’s Winnipeg Shamrocks beat the United States to gold with the Mohawk Indians, also from Canada, taking bronze.
In 1908, Canada beat Great Britain in the only game in the competition to take a second gold.
Best Lacrosse players to watch
The United States and Canada are the traditional powerhouses of field lacrosse although the latter have yet to win a women's world title. Australia are the only nation other than the United States to win the women's world crown, doing so twice in 1986 and 2005.
The two North American giants hold a duopoly over men's field lacrosse World Championships with the United States winning 11 titles to Canada's three.
But at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama, where the World Lacrosse Sixes format was used, Canada beat the United States in both the men's and women's finals.
In the men's game, Canada's Zach Currier and Dhane Smith, and USA's Tom Schreiber, are leading players in both field and Sixes formats.
Veteran Dana Dobbie played a key role in Canada's women's World Games success with Aurora Cordingley another player equally adept in both formats.
