by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kelly Evans 

Wall Street Journal

May 20, 2009

This weekend in Foxboro, Mass., more than 100,000 spectators are expected to pour into Gillette Stadium to see four schools -- Duke, Virginia, Cornell and Syracuse -- square off for the national championship of a sport that, if the numbers are correct, you'll be hearing a lot more about. That sport is lacrosse.

Until recently, lacrosse -- America's other stick and ball sport -- was rarely on TV and only its championship games generated much in the way of media coverage. It was mostly played on the East Coast, and it was often viewed as a game for private-school kids. Some of the game's most electrifying athletes -- Gary and Paul Gait; Casey, Ryan and Michael Powell -- were little known outside core followers. The sole exception may be Jim Brown, the former Cleveland Browns running back who played lacrosse at Syracuse University.

"Lacrosse has taken off because it combines the hitting of football, the speed of basketball, and requires the endurance of soccer," says Kyle Harrison, who led Johns Hopkins to a national championship in 2005 and who won that year's Tewaaraton Trophy as the country's best male player.

These days the sport is showing serious growth. Participation in high school lacrosse has about doubled this decade, to a total of 143,946 boys and girls playing on high school lacrosse teams in the 2007-08 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, which tracks participation by sport. In 2000-01, there were 74,225 high school lacrosse players.

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