CASUAL
BARNES, FRED
Casual THE GRAND NEW GAME I have seen the future of American sports, and its name is lacrosse. Football, baseball, basketball, and soccer will, sooner or later, be forced to step aside. They all...
...Girls don't need it anymore...
...Girls' lacrosse has its anomalies...
...This antique of a rule is bound to be repealed...
...My attitude is, if this is the worst thing that happens, I can live with it...
...Young boys often carry their lacrosse sticks around the house and poke and swat their parents and siblings...
...That leaves lacrosse...
...Her boyfriend now limits his sports activity to basketball in season and lacrosse all year...
...For basketball, you'd better be very tall...
...It soon will, I'm sure...
...At least the girls' team I see the most does...
...Number three, Title IX—you know, that federal regulation that's killing off so many boys' sports because schools are required to equalize their athletic programs between girls' and boys' teams...
...How, you ask, can I be so sure that lacrosse is the hottest trend in sports...
...It's growing the way soccer did in the 1980s, partly because soccer is fading in popularity...
...Bad reason, good result...
...Her players are as well conditioned as Scottie Pippen, as aggressive as Karl Malone...
...He plays year-round...
...Kathy is a lacrosse professional...
...They're tough...
...Its only problem is the field is large, often a football field, and the ball is small...
...My daughter suffered from soccer burnout and also dropped out...
...Thus, it's doomed, too...
...They all have their fatal flaws anyway...
...The only question in my mind is how it supplants NFL football on Sunday-afternoon TV...
...That's why they're perennially top-ranked in the nation and Kathy is regarded as the best coach of girls' high-school lacrosse in America...
...team...
...Naturally, this leads to some unintended consequences...
...Now, she has a special scoring play designed for her called "Surge Barnes" on her school team—and she's a defensive player, not an attacker...
...Stephen's and St...
...He's moonlighting actually, since, full-time, he's a Washington publicist...
...Trust me, lacrosse is coming to your town...
...And lacrosse gives them the opportunity to whack away at their opponents, so long as they don't hit them on the head, face, or back...
...The idea is to avoid being hit by the ball, which is hard and smaller than a baseball...
...Agnes School in Alexandria, Va., coached by my next-door neighbor, Kathy Jenkins...
...Lacrosse has something else besides the use of hands that soccer doesn't— lots of scoring...
...I'm talking about boys and girls...
...Of course, if you live west of the Appalachians and south of Virginia, you've probably never had a chance to see a lacrosse game in the first place...
...It's in the genes...
...And so on...
...The strangest rule involves "shooting space," which bars a defender from getting between her opponent and the goal...
...In time, I'll become an expert...
...This makes it hard for spectators to see when goals are scored...
...That's the squad at St...
...Not that I've ever played lacrosse competitively (or non-competitively, for that matter...
...I use my baseball glove...
...Baseball, unless you're the pitcher or the catcher, consists mostly of standing around...
...My son isn't ready to give up basketball, but he's abandoned soccer for lacrosse...
...The best girls' teams play with the mercilessness of boys...
...Soccer has none of these drawbacks—it's for average-sized people who like to run—but it has the dumbest rule of any sport: no hands...
...They're allowed to jab with their sticks as well...
...One of her fellow coaches, Craig Shirley, is a lacrosse zealot...
...One way to help comply with Title IX is to add girls' lacrosse, and many, many schools are doing just that...
...Girls play the game differently from boys: no helmets or shoulder and arm pads, no whacking with the stick, 12 players on a side to 10 for males...
...It's fast, it's rough, it puts great emphasis on skill with your hands, and you don't have to be big or tall to be a star...
...Ah, but now I've seen dozens of games, and though I haven't figured out all of the rules, especially in girls' lacrosse, I consider myself a reasonably knowledgeable fan...
...In lacrosse, it's 12-10...
...The average soccer score is 0-0...
...He coaches the boys' j.v...
...Number two, boys like to hit each other with sticks...
...Number one, kids like it...
...They use lacrosse sticks...
...FRED BARNES...
...In fact, until my daughter Grace and son Freddy started playing the sport a half-dozen years ago, I'd seen only one game, and that was in college (I left the game early...
...I've conducted a survey among kids in my neighborhood, and, yes, they prefer lacrosse...
...Craig is crusading for lacrosse to become an Olympic sport...
...Football stresses physical size, which is fine for Reggie White but not for the rest of us...
...I actually practice with my kids, tossing the ball around in the backyard...
...Again, I can live with it...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 38
