What’s Lacrosse?
A Fast Team Sport
Lacrosse is a fast, tactical and technical team sport. The sport is a combination of well-known sports such as basketball, hockey and American football and therefore an easy sport to pick up. There are ten players per team (field lacrosse), twelve players (women’s lacrosse) or six players (box lacrosse). Men’s lacrosse and women’s lacrosse differ in many ways, read more about that in the other sections.
The Game
All players have a stick, the “crosse”, with a net on the end with which a ball is being thrown. This ball is made of hard rubber and is the size of a baseball. The object of the game is for all versions of lacrosse the same: get the ball with the stick and score in the opponent’s goal. Each goal provides a point. In the men’s version of lacrosse physical contact is allowed and the match consists four times twenty minutes with between each quarter a short break. In women’s lacrosse the emphasis is more on tactics and technique and there is no physical contact allowed. The match for women’s lacrosse also consists of quarters with short breaks in between, but the quarters last for 15 minutes instead of 20 minutes.
Ground
The game is played on grass or artificial turf on the size of a hockey field. In the absence of more formal lacrosse fields all the games are played on hockey and football fields in The Netherlands.