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Lacrosse comes to Piedmont
By Justin Sharrett, Piedmont Sports Insider
Published: Friday, October 21, 2005

Piedmont students will soon be able to play the oldest sport in North America, a sport rooted in Native American religion, a sport played to resolve conflict, heal the sick, build strong men, and prepare Native Americans for war. That sport is lacrosse (www.lacrosse.org), and it's official, Piedmont now has a lacrosse team of its own. It'll just be played for fun here though, it won't be a pre-war ritual, and we won't hold a lacrosse game if someone gets the flu or chicken pox.

Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in the southeast right now, but there is still no conference play. Most colleges just have club lacrosse teams, which is what Piedmont will have for a couple of years until it becomes an official NCAA sport in the Great South Athletic Conference. For that to happen, seven schools in the conference must decide to add lacrosse as a sport. That will probably take a couple of years, but when it does, lacrosse can become an intercollegiate sport.

This spring season here at Piedmont will be more about getting organized and getting a clue than competing. No one signed up to play has ever played organized lacrosse, so this spring will be a time of hard work and a time of learning. There is no official schedule for the spring season yet. It will probably consist mostly of some conditioning and a lot of practice since the sport is so new to most people. The team will play in some scrimmage games, but no concrete dates have been set for any games. Next year is when the real competition will start though. The Lions will play other college club teams like Appalachian State, Western Carolina, Alabama, and Furman through an organization in Atlanta and get prepared for conference play which is just a couple of years away.