| The owners of the MN Wild recently bought a franchise in the National Lacrosse League. The new team is the Minnesota Swarm (as in Minnesota's other state bird, the mosquito). We got free tickets to attend a pre-season game at the X...just to check out the sport and the new team. It was great to be at the X again and party at Tom Reid's before hand. Lacrosse is somewhat like hockey, soccer, and basketball. Fast-passed, lots of hard hits, higher scores than hockey...but still some good fights. An ILL pre-season record crowd of 14,084 fans watched the first-ever professional lacrosse game in the state of Minnesota. The Mammoth won 16-6, but the Swarm got revenge Saturday night in Colorado and beat the Mammoth 12-10. |
| National Lacrosse League Minnesota Swarm vs. Colorado Mammoth December 10, 2004 Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul |
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| Click on images to see them larger. |
| Minnesota "swarms" around its goalie before the game. |
| Drop the puck...err the ball that is! The referee first places the ball on the turf. |
| Then the centers place their sticks on the ground near the ball...and when the whistle blows they scramble for control. |
| Colorado, the defending ILL champs, scored early and often against the MN goalie. |
| But the Swarm finally buzzed around the CO goalie and scored six goals. |
| Towards the end of the game a lot of fights broke out including this one. At one point all 10 men on the field were fighting. And like hockey, they all served five minutes for fighting. The sin bins were crowded! |
| Marine buddies John and Jesse and Jesse's girlfriend Mandi joined me at the game |
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