Tips on covering lacrosse

[dooley_womack1]

Be sure to check the police scanners.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

In my experience, lacrosse players -- male and female -- have been some of the best athletes to interview. Sure, you get some spoiled rich snots, but that's overblown and hardly exclusive to lax.

 

[Walter_Sobchak]

Boys/men's lacrosse, if played well, is probably my favorite high school sport to cover, next to football.
Girls lacrosse is barely a sport. I'd rather cover field hockey.

 

[Quakes]

I used to cover boys and girls lacrosse. They are different in many ways -- example: 12 players a side in women's, 10 a side in men's -- but the basic idea is the same. I knew nothing about the sport before being thrown on the beat, but quickly grew to love it. It's sort of like a combination of basketball and hockey on grass. (Especially the men's version, which allows checking.) A lot of the same principles from those sports apply: the importance of possession, moving without the ball, transitioning from offense to defense (fast-breaking, basically), substitutions on the fly. So if you have an idea of how to watch basketball and/or hockey, you'll have a decent sense of what you're watching in lacrosse.

Some of the language and rules and technical aspects are unique, of course, but the more games you watch, the more you'll pick up. A couple of examples, off the top of my head: The guys with the long poles are the defensemen, who mark the other team's attackmen. And FOGO stands for "Faceoff, get off," and refers to a player whose specialty is winning faceoffs (but may not be that good at anything else, and thus quickly gets off the field after faceoffs).

Those are specific to men's lacrosse, though. Women's lacrosse sticks are all the same -- no long poles. And the action starts with a draw, rather than a faceoff, although it's just as important, because, as I said, possession is very important. One thing that always frustrated me about girls lacrosse was the officiating; very often I couldn't figure out why the refs were blowing the whistle. But the coaches -- who knew the rules -- usually had the same complaint.

Whether you're covering boys or girls, ground balls is a key stat, because it tells you who was coming up with loose balls and controlling possession. And, echoing Jake_Taylor, most of the coaches and players I dealt with were pleasant to deal with and happy to answer my stupid questions.

 

[silvershadow1981]

In my experience, lacrosse players -- male and female -- have been some of the best athletes to interview. Sure, you get some spoiled rich snots, but that's overblown and hardly exclusive to lax.

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.

 

[Big Circus]

In my experience, lacrosse players -- male and female -- have been some of the best athletes to interview. Sure, you get some spoiled rich snots, but that's overblown and hardly exclusive to lax.

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.

 

[JC]

Boys/men's lacrosse, if played well, is probably my favorite high school sport to cover, next to football.
Girls lacrosse is barely a sport. I'd rather cover field hockey.

I like the girls game better, and really enjoyed that beat when I was on it years ago. Just seems to require more skill and finesse. Of course, it didn't hurt that one of the teams I covered was widely considered among the top 5 in the country.

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.

 

[forever_town]

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.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

In my experience, lacrosse players -- male and female -- have been some of the best athletes to interview. Sure, you get some spoiled rich snots, but that's overblown and hardly exclusive to lax.

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 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.

 

[ringer]

Boys/men's lacrosse, if played well, is probably my favorite high school sport to cover, next to football.
Girls lacrosse is barely a sport. I'd rather cover field hockey.

I like the girls game better, and really enjoyed that beat when I was on it years ago. Just seems to require more skill and finesse. Of course, it didn't hurt that one of the teams I covered was widely considered among the top 5 in the country.

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 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.

 

[JC]

Boys/men's lacrosse, if played well, is probably my favorite high school sport to cover, next to football.
Girls lacrosse is barely a sport. I'd rather cover field hockey.

I like the girls game better, and really enjoyed that beat when I was on it years ago. Just seems to require more skill and finesse. Of course, it didn't hurt that one of the teams I covered was widely considered among the top 5 in the country.

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 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.

 

[93Devil]

Boys/men's lacrosse, if played well, is probably my favorite high school sport to cover, next to football.
Girls lacrosse is barely a sport. I'd rather cover field hockey.

I like the girls game better, and really enjoyed that beat when I was on it years ago. Just seems to require more skill and finesse. Of course, it didn't hurt that one of the teams I covered was widely considered among the top 5 in the country.

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 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.

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.

 

[flexmaster33]

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

 

[Baron Scicluna]

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.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

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.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

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.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

I heard somebody call women's/girls lacrosse freeze tag the other day.

 

[93Devil]

Isn't there a way in women's lax to stall inside your own keeper's circle if you are ahead?

Why am I thinking that?

 

[Stitch]

Have heard more lacrosse players shout the f-word on the sidelines over the past few days than I heard in covering all other sports combined for the past few years.

 

[ShiptoShore]

I'm on a college lacrosse beat this year for the first time, and I really enjoy it. I hate labeling personalities to different sports, but I guess I will anyway. I'm able to do all kinds of features at pretty much whatever angle I want, because the players and coaches just enjoy the coverage and are very easy going.

College hockey is big in my area, and that's a different story. I can try for various stories throughout the year (outside of previews and gamers), but I'm getting the same quotes every week.

Lacrosse teams generally don't feel like the coverage is owed to them like other sports. That's seems to be the difference.