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You probably know (doesn't everybody?) that lacrosse originated with Native Americans, who were playing several different versions of the sport long before Columbus arrived. |
| Many tribes played on horseback. Among some Southern tribes, players used two sticks, one in each hand. There were men's versions, women's versions, and "coed" versions. |
| Quite often, entire villages competed against one another and the goals were miles apart. With hundreds of players on each team, it wasn't easy to get to the ball, so most of them simply used their sticks as weapons and tried to disable as many opponents as possible. |
| Among the Iroquois in the area that now comprises Upstate New York and Southern Ontario, there was a kinder, gentler version known as "baggataway," which was played with only twelve to fifteen players per team on a field about 180 feet long. |
That form of the sport developed into modern lacrosse. Standard rules were developed in 1867 by the Montreal Lacrosse Club. Ice hockey was taking shape at the same time, also in Montreal. When McGill University students first standardized the rules for that sport, they drew heavily on the rules of lacrosse.
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How the Ball Became a Puck |
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| In fact, ice hockey was originally played with a lacrosse ball, if you can imagine such a thing. About 1879, the top and bottom were sliced off the ball to allow it to slide along the ice instead of bouncing crazily around, and that was how the puck originated. |
| Lacrosse had twelve players, ice hockey only nine because the ice rink is smaller than the lacrosse field. In hockey, as in lacrosse, defensemen had to stay in their end of the rink and attackmen (centers and wings) had to stay in the offensive end. Hockey rules on checking and interference were taken directly from lacrosse and they remain essentially the same to this
day. |
| In the meantime, lacrosse was introduced to England. It wasn't very popular at first, although it was played by some schools and clubs. |
| Field hockey became a women's sport in England in 1887. The rules were patterned after those of soccer, with eleven players per side and very little permissible body contact. A peculiarity of women's field hockey, as compared to the men's sport, is that the field has no formal boundaries. |
| During the fall, women played field hockey while men played soccer or Rugby. And, while men were playing cricket during the spring, women played field hockey some more, if they played anything at all. |
| Then it occurred to someone that lacrosse, with suitable adaptations, could become a spring sport for women. In essence, a new game was created, patterned after field hockey. Even the "boundless field" was brought over intact. And physical contact was virtually eliminated. In women's lacrosse, checking is strictly forbidden, while it's an important feature of the men's sport. |
When Constance M. K. Applebee of England came to the Harvard Summer School to teach in 1901, she was astounded to learn that American women didn't play team sports. She stayed in the United States, taught the sport at Vassar, and ran a summer camp in Pennsylvania, where many American women learned to play field hockey. By 1922, it had become the major team sport for women in this country.
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Lacrosse Has a Mother! |
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| Miss Applebee is mentioned in all of the American sports history books as the "mother" of women's field hockey. But it isn't often noted that she also introduced women's lacrosse to North America. Following the pattern set in England, she taught lacrosse as well as field hockey at Vassar and at her summer camp. And the U. S. Women's Lacrosse Association was founded during the camp's 1931 session. |
| Ironic, isn't it? Here is a Native American sport that had to be imported
from England before women could play it. |
| So there you have a tale of two sports, hockey and lacrosse, that are really
four sports. . . Ice hockey and men's lacrosse, field hockey and women's
lacrosse. They are sports with many similarities. But vive la difference! |