A Guide To Lacrosse

I'm going to talk to you a little bit about lacrosse in general. The men's version has ten players a side. The object is to get the ball in the goal as you can see in the background.

It's full of contact and so, obviously, the players will be wearing their protection so you've got arm pads, helmet and gloves. There are other options like shoulder pads, rib pads and a box as well. It's quite a fast paced game.

It starts off in the middle of the pitch for the faceoff. There is a goalie and three defensemen, three midfielders and three attackers. The three midfielders are allowed to go in the attacking half and the defending half but it will be called offside if there are too many players on either side of the pitch.

The usual scores in games are roughly ten. Ten goals a side and give or take depending on the type of game. Men's lacrosse is a lot bigger in the States and Canada and up north in England, it's also quite big, around the Manchester area, but not as much down south but it's picking up steam as a university sport.

That's why a lot of us picked up and the club is definitely growing. And in terms of the game itself, it's ten a side, consisting of a goalie, three defenders, three midfielders and three attack men. They'll be subs in all those positions and the subs are rolling so you can come pitch whenever you want, as many sub as you want in a game.

So as a general rule, the middies are the ones that sub on and off the defenders and attackers in their position as a general rule. So, the middies kind of come on, work hard for 2 or 3 minutes until they're knocked and then they can sub off. The middies and attack men have shorter sticks, roughly this size, and the defenders as you might see in the background have six-foot sticks and obviously with a six-foot stick, there's more reach, more chance to hassle players, more chance to take the ball off them but the cost of that is a lot less and in control, it's a lot harder to use.

So, the three types of lacrosse are men's, women's and mixed. Men's is full contact so that's body to body, stick to stick and certain areas of the body. Women's is semi-contact so you're allowed stick to stick but there are specific rules on which ways you could put your stick towards and obviously because women aren't, in the women's game, not as protected so you can't slash towards the head.

It's one of the examples of rule differences and the mixed lacrosse is no contact at all and then there's a limitation of 5 seconds on the ball. Otherwise if you get a full turn of the ball over, there's no contact and you could hold the ball as long as you want. If you're the team in possession, you can't hit other people.

If the ball is on the floor, you can hit anyone within a three-meter radius and if they have the ball, then you can hit the opposing player who has the ball and you could either strike the stick on their hands or their stick. If you hit them in the body or the arms or maybe the head, it could be classed as a brush if it looked like you were going for a stick and other than that, you can with people, so put your hands together like that and hit them. The rules regarding that are you can't have your hands separated on a stick otherwise it could go up to someone's throat and it's a lot more dangerous so you put your hands together and body like that.

And that's a quick guide to lacrosse. .