Tips on covering lacrosse

There was a boys lacrosse player in my coverage area all the local reporters used to call "The Professional" because he was so well-spoken, rarely used cliches and gave us straight ahead answers, it was unreal.

 

Lacrosse players tend to be pretty smart kids, for the most part.

 

there is no way in hell the woman's game takes more skill and finesse than the men's game. The men are playing with extreme contact, there is no hitting in the woman's game. The skill that it takes to play the game with contact is immense.

 

I was in a similar situation because I started covering my university's women's lacrosse team. I went in basically knowing nothing about women's lax and essentially just the basics of the men's game. After two seasons of covering that team, I felt pretty comfortable with the women's end of the sport.

Oh, and I also officiated one season of boys lax.

What worked for me was reading up on the sport before I went in, then try to read as much as I can and talk to as many people as I can. Use the time before the opening faceoff to pick the brains of people there if they're not distracted and running around.

If you're the only reporter there, try to think of questions to ask, both for your own understanding and for the reader's. Of course, that holds true for the sports you're familiar with.

The analogies to basketball or hockey on grass are fairly spot on. Watch for penalty flags, though. Some of the signals are similar to those for football.

 

Lacrosse people realize that not everyone grew up around the game and they want the sport to grow. They almost all, from a high school freshman on the JV team to hall of fame college coaches and the best players in the world, will take time to explain things to you if you don't understand.

 

I wouldn't underestimate the skill of women's LAX players, and there's one major reason:

The pocket of a woman's stick is about as third as deep as a man's. It takes enormous skill just trying to keep the ball in that shallow basket while people are smacking your stick and/or you're in a full sprint. I've seen varsity guys try it and fail miserably.

 

Please, it's not Lacrosse without contact.

 

IIRC, there is no contact in women's lax. You try to make the player spin or stop and lose control of her cradle of the ball. And there is no pocket in a women's stick.

 

I always thought it was pretty much hockey on grass with more goals. Just my impression though...never covered it.

 

And to further confuse things, in men's lacrosse, there are penalty flags.

First time I ever saw a game, I thought that was just plain weird.

 

If you want to be taken seriously as a lacrosse writer, don't let news-side beat you to the hard-hitting investigative stuff, especially during bowl week.

 

Women's lacrosse also has the dumbest rule in sports. If a player scores a goal while being fouled, the goal does not count and she gets a free shot in front of the net.
Every other sport has some way if dealing with this type of situation so the team that commits the foul is not rewarded for doing so (and 1 in basketball, advantage in soccer, etc.).
A referee explained the rationale to me once, but it still didn't make any sense.