Lacrosse hasn’t always been limited to one of the best college sports in the world. The fact is that lacrosse has been around for much longer than most people know and has played significant roles in the development of the communities and the religious lives of those tribes over and across the continents for many years. Lacrosse was considered something that was done in the spirit of combat and the warriors who played the game took on that ideal. They played it for their gods.
So how did it go from a Native American game to something that is slowly becoming a mainstream college sport? In 1637 it was the first time that a European person had ever written about the game in a book that was called lacrosse. The missionary Jean de Brebeuf wrote about the sport which was being called “field hockey.”
But it wasn’t until 1856 when William George Beers founded a lacrosse club in the city of Montreal, was lacrosse really something that was more than just a Native American sport. But when Beers created the lacrosse club he did so with the idea of making some serious changes to the sport that would make it easier to play. The first thing he did was make the game shorter. This would allow the game to be played recreationally and to be done more than just once a week.
The other issue he had was with the number of players. There were over 100 players who used to play. He since reduced the players to twelve each team. This is some of the changes that you can see today if you were to attend a local lacrosse game or if you are playing a lacrosse game. The first game was played under the lacrosse rules in 1867.
