LaxTV Forums | A Forum About The MCLA

By PETER C. BELLER
Published: June 5, 2005

TWO gym teachers are credited with bringing lacrosse to Long Island from New York City in the 1930's. After World War II, the city all but forgot about the sport, but on Long Island the suburban population was exploding in the 1960's and lacrosse boomed with it.

Now, with the Island's dominance in lacrosse long established, a second boom is occurring in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, fed by the sport's increasing popularity among girls and a near-saturation of youth programs all the way down to kindergarten.

Long Island is not alone in its embrace of lacrosse. In April, Sports Illustrated declared lacrosse the fastest-growing sport in the United States, its growth fueled primarily by the spread of the game to areas like California, Colorado and the South where a lacrosse stick would have drawn curious stares only a decade ago.

Those were generally untapped areas, however. Long Island has long been a hotbed of lacrosse, but its popularity has not hit a plateau.

The number of people playing lacrosse on Long Island grew by about a third to nearly 20,000 between 2001 and last year, said U.S. Lacrosse, the sport's governing body, and estimates by officials on the Island put the figure much higher. Most of that growth has been driven by the expansion of youth programs, especially for girls, with some communities fielding dozens of teams for hundreds of youngsters.

The decades of lacrosse tradition have endowed the Island with more and more parent-coaches who played in high school or college and want to see their children pick up a stick. And an increase in the opportunities for women to play in college, many on athletic scholarships, has bolstered girls' lacrosse at all levels, coaches and parents say.

The number of girls playing in the Nassau County Police Athletic League tripled to more than 2,500 in the last three years, said Officer George McLaren, who since 1991 has run the PAL lacrosse program, which oversees most of Nassau's traveling teams for third through eighth graders. The PAL program totals about 7,000 participants, from 40 communities, generally organized along school district lines.