With the help of YouTube and Wikipedia, Mike Kasdan explains a sport he knows nothing about: Lacrosse.
We’ve been doing Sports Explained for two months now.
We’ve gone complex simplicity of baseball to the grace and pageantry of football to the beautiful game of soccer. We’ve gone international, with rugby. And then came back super local, with ultimate frisbee. Last week, we hit the granddaddy, golf, with an assist from Happy Gilmore and Caddyshack.
Today, on the tail end of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we set our sights on a game that we appropriated from the native americans and made our prep-school own, lacrosse.
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Today’s Sports Explained shall follow a question-and-answer format:
Q: How did the game of lacrosse move from the plains Iroquois Nation to the turf fields of Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton?
A: We have no idea.
Q: Why should I care about lacrosse?
A: Though described by Wikipedia as “a marginally popular team in North America,” if you listen to the complaints of baseball, soccer, and football youth coaches, it’s popularity among youth sports seems to be growing.
(Sports Editor’s Note: It’s actually a fantastic game to play and watch, blending athletic and strategic aspects of football and soccer. It’s rise in popularity at the youth levels is no surprise).
Q: How does it work?
A: The object of the game is to score by shooting the ball into an opponent’s goal, using the lacrosse stick to catch, cradle, carry, and pass the ball.
THIS is how it’s done:
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So there you have it: Lacrosse, explained.
What sport do you want us to enlighten you about in next week’s Sports Explained?
We want to hear from you!
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(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Gail Burton)
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