The New York Times published a great read about the growth of lacrosse today. The article boasts about low-level college teams making waves in the sport across America. The article even talks about a Navy Vs. Johns Hopkins game forty years ago in Houston that sparked the interest of soon-to-be fans. What isn’t mentioned is the impact this growth is having on manufacturers.
With the growth of the sport comes added sales. Companies will continue to sell items at a high rate for years to come, and we will also see more new companies pop up on the scene like Maverik for instance. Take a look at these excerpts and follow the link to the whole article.
What was once a niche sport in New England and the Middle Atlantic is now one of the fastest-growing games in the United States.
In the three N.C.A.A. divisions, 20 women’s lacrosse teams and 12 men’s teams made their debuts this year, most of them in Division III — including Southwestern. At least two dozen teams are scheduled to come on board next year.
The reasons are simple. It can be relatively inexpensive to start a lacrosse team, and the games are fast paced and high scoring.
The debut of Southwestern — the first N.C.A.A. men’s lacrosse program in Texas — comes nearly four decades after Navy and Johns Hopkins played the first varsity college game in the state at the Astrodome in Houston, according to US Lacrosse, the sport’s national governing body.
Part of the reason lacrosse is catching on is that, although it was invented by North American Indians hundreds of years ago, it has echoes of popular modern sports. It combines the back-and-forth movement of soccer, the motion plays and contact of basketball, and the sticks, hand skills and setup behind the goal found in hockey.
“The sport lends itself to the strategies of other sports that the kids kind of pick up on,” said Brian Logue, a US Lacrosse spokesman.
Varsity lacrosse has another potential benefit. According to the N.C.A.A., among freshmen entering school from 1999 to 2002, the graduation rate of lacrosse players was the highest among 17 men’s sports and tied for second with gymnastics — behind skiing at No. 1 — among 18 women’s sports.
Full article hear.
