Lacrosse and Me

As a child one is exposed to several sports; some are played for a month or maybe a summer or two or perhaps even for several years before being relegated to the annals of yesterday while others are enjoyed year after year until it seeps into the blood and becomes part of one’s soul. For me, the sports of yesteryear included soccer (although I was reacquainted with the sport in high school on those dreary days perfect for the sport), tennis, handball, squash and road hockey to name those that have not escaped my memory. Baseball and hockey were the sports that filled my days right through childhood and into my university years to become part of my being. Although I still enjoy those sports, they have been replaced in my heart by another.

During my first year of high school, in a mandatory physical education class, I was first introduced to a sport that, unknown to me at the time, would grow in my heart and soul to eventually replace the love of both sports I grew up enjoying. This sport is Canada’s official summer sport of lacrosse. It was on a list of required items, along with square dancing, that had to be covered in a minimum number of classes in that mandatory class. As with all public institutions, the minimum was met and that was that; the sticks were hung back on the rusty nails to await the next group of freshmen.

Around that time the Buffalo Bandits were selling out the “Aud” and winning MILL championships and I was able to see some action on a local Buffalo station. After a few games over a couple of years, the television coverage stopped and I forgot about the Bandits and the league (I didn’t even know it was a professional league at the time). Fast forward to a Sunday afternoon in 1999 when I stumbled on a televised Toronto Rock game followed by an encounter with a relative of the speedy Steve Toll a year or so later, and my love for the sport of lacrosse really began to grow. The tiny seed that was sitting dormant in my heart since the early days of the Bandits had finally received the attention it needed.

Now, about ten years after that first Rock game, I cannot get enough of the sport: lacrosse has relegated baseball and hockey to a small corner of my heart and threatens to eliminate them entirely. Could my late introduction to the sport be the cause of this devotion? Who knows or cares. I’m hooked now and can’t get enough.