The Most Dangerous Game

Here’s something that I recently discovered. Anyone who thinks that today’s young generation is coddled, babied, overprotected, love luxury and all those things that people have liked to sling around ever since Socrates have obviously never seen 13 year-olds play lacrosse. I had the distinct pleasure of doing this on Friday night as we went to watch our nephew in a local tournament. Now, our nephew is an athletic kid, slim build, and as we stood in the bleachers watching the team enter the arena, I couldn’t figure out which one was him:

Me: He’s one of the goalies, right?
Ken: Yeah…the goalies are over there.
Me: But neither of them could be him—they’re both HUGE.
Ken: I think they wear a lot of padding.

A lot of padding is an understatement—it was indeed my nephew and he looked like he had several couch cushions hidden underneath his uniform. I was trying to figure out how on earth a goalie could move around in equipment like that, then I saw the actual net, and it was only marginally wider than the kid in it, so it looked like not a lot of moving was actually required. And what was even weirder is that none of the other kids, the ones who weren’t goalies, were wearing ANY padding at all. Okay, I thought—I guess they get really violent with the goalie, shooting the ball at him hard and whatnot, but they must have a LOT of rules to protect the other kids. And then they started playing, and I was like, what the actual f*ck?? I mean, I coached high school senior rugby for several years and it’s a pretty aggressive game, but I swear, 13 year-old lacrosse players are MANIACS. They were whacking each other with sticks, knocking each other onto the concrete, shoving, tripping, tackling—it was unreal—at one point, there were four players in the penalty box, 3 from the other team and 1 from our side. My nephew’s team won something like 16-1 but they have a mercy rule (the irony of which has not escaped me) so they only show the score up until 8. And then, when the final whistle blew, they all shook hands like it was no big thing that they had just survived The Hunger Games.

After he got his equipment off and we hauled several large cushion bags to the car, we took him for some fast food:

Me: That was pretty violent.
Nephew: Yeah. The other team was playing a little dirty though. And the refs weren’t calling very many penalties.
Me: You mean they could have called MORE? So you’re not actually allowed to take your lacrosse stick and slam it into the back of another player?
Nephew: If they don’t have the ball, you shouldn’t.

And the best part was that I had the whole thing completely backwards—the goalie is the one LEAST likely to get hurt because no one is allowed to go into the inner crease plus the goalie is dressed like a giant mattress and everything just bounces off him. Well, off my nephew. Not the other goalie, who let in 16 goals. As my nephew succinctly pointed out, “Their defence sucked.” But their offense? That was killer. Literally.

31 thoughts on “The Most Dangerous Game”

  1. The junior high school I went to didn’t have lacrosse. We had the street corner out in front of the school. Participants would go there after class and beat each other up without sticks.

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  3. Reminds me of gym class back in the 80’s when it was dodgeball day, and the PE teacher just emptied out the storage closet with every kind of ball they had…. including some pretty crude, hard soccer balls. Not those soft bouncy balls they use today. We were MEN back then!!!

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  4. Playing lacrosse on concrete just seems like it’s raising the danger level even more. I’ve seen it played on grass and that was violent enough but at least when the players fell it was on soft ground. Anyway I think “You shouldn’t hit your opponent in the back with a stick when they don’t have the ball” are words to live by. And potentially die by.

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    • Yes, I was shocked that they were playing on the concrete underpadding at the arena–I thought it was an outdoor game too. The one time my rugby team went to an indoor tournament, they had to play on astroturf over concrete and the injuries were insane!

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  7. Our Labrador and I would walk the jr high lacrosse field which was fringed by brush and woods. The field was actually for the high school’s team. Those solid rubber balls have a scent that our lab honed in on. Every start of the next season we would make a presentation of all the balls she found. Sometimes as many as forty. The last time, before she died of cancer, the team gave her a loud cheer. I think I still have an errant yellow ball bouncing around in a drawer somewhere.

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  12. It’s so great to watch kids play the games they love. I’ve never watched lacrosse, but the padding makes sense since the game seems fast and hard. His padding is more than I’d expected to be honest, but 13-year-olds aren’t known for the highest levels of critical thinking, so I’m glad he’s protected! Enjoy the season!

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  14. My Canadian stepson also played lacrosse. Being from the US, I was a bit shocked also when I went to one of his games for the first time. Shocked at the violence on the court and some in the stands as well! You Canucks take lacrosse seriously!

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