As spring approaches, the Edgewood men’s and women’s lacrosse teams will take the field to start their seasons. Lacrosse is a new sport to Edgewood as the boys enter their second year as a varsity sport and the girls start their second year as a club. There are major differences between how men’s and women’s lacrosse is played. 

Men’s lacrosse player, Garrett Beckman has enjoyed playing lacrosse for the past nine years but stated that it was a hard sport to learn when he first started playing. “There were many rules that didn’t make sense to me at first, one that I struggled with starting out was slashing and spearing,” said Garrett. Slashing and spearing is when you hit someone with your stick somewhere not on their gloves or stick, an example would be hitting someone in the head with your stick. “Lacrosse is a physical sport and it took some time adjusting to the contact. I’ve been laid out before and it does not feel very well,” said Garrett. On the field, there are ten total people playing at once, including a goalie, three defenders, a long stick middie(LSM), two short stick middies, and three attackmen. “I’ve played every position but goalie and the hardest position is LSM since you have to know when to go on for defense and make sure that I get off at the right time for an offensive middie to go on,” said Garrett. A big part of the lacrosse game is faceoffs, they occur at the start of the game and every time after a goal is scored. Faceoffs determine who will have possession of the ball, they are between a player from each team in the middle of the field. “Faceoffs is a tough thing to be good at because you have to have good strength to get the ball free from the other player and you must have good reaction time from when the ref blows the whistle to start to faceoff,” said Garrett. There are two types of sticks in lacrosse, one is a short stick and the other is a long stick. The short sticks are for offensive players and the long sticks are for defensive players. 

Women’s lacrosse is played similarly to men’s lacrosse but there are some differences between the two. Women’s lacrosse player, Maggie Henderson, states that one of the major differences is that there is no contact in women’s lacrosse, “We can’t hit each other or even poke check the opposing teams stick.”. To play girls lacrosse there is far less equipment needed than guys must have. “The only gear we have is goggles that cover our eyes and sometimes players wear helmets if they play goalie or get hit in the head with a ball,” said Maggie. In women’s lacrosse, there are twelve people on the field at once, including a goalie, six defenders, and five attackers. Like men’s lacrosse face-offs are a part of women’s lacrosse but instead are called duals and are done a bit differently. “For face-offs, we stand up and the ref places them between our sticks and blows the whistle and then we battle for the ball,” said Maggie. Both the women’s and men’s lacrosse teams will look to have great seasons and get some more fans in stands this spring.