Lacrosse is a sport played by two teams, in which the purpose is to shoot the ball past a goaltender into a rectangular goal. Each player has a long stick of between three and six feet in length, one end having attached to it a small triangular basket (the head) for carrying the ball.

The indoor version of lacrosse, which is the main focus of the Outsider's Guide, is played in hockey rinks with six-man teams (field lacrosse teams have ten per side). Whereas the outdoor field game is played on an open field, indoor, or box, lacrosse uses retaining boards much as hockey does.

In box lacrosse, the goal that players aim for is 4' x 4'9", and is surrounded by a circle of nine feet, three inches in diameter, known as the crease. Offensive players may not enter the crease.

Created by Indigenous Americans, lacrosse was considered by many tribes to be excellent practice for war -- the Cherokees even called it "the little brother of war." Teams could consist of as many of hundreds, or even thousands, of players. Goals were often miles apart. Games lasted as long as three days. Most players were unable to get close to the ball, and so took to concentrating their efoorts on using their stick as a weapon.

The Six Tribes of the Iriquois, in the area which is now southern Ontario and western New York, called their version of lacrosse "baggataway" or "teewaraathon." This was much more organized than in most parts of the country, including the limitation of only 12 to 15 players per team and defined boundaries, including goals about 120 feet apart.

According to many sources, the first Europeans to witness baggataway were French explorers who felt the stick resembled a bishop's crozier -- "la crosse, in French" -- so baggataway took on the new name. Other sources, perhaps more accurately, claim lacrosse is derived from the name of a field hockey game the French played -- "jeu de la crosse."

In the early 1800s, Europeans in Canada began playing the game. Montreal's Olympic Club organized a team in 1844, specifically to play a match against an Indigenous team. Similar games were played in 1848 and 1851. The first step lacrosse took towards becoming a legitimate, modern sport came when the Montreal Lacrosse Club (formed in 1856) developed the first written rules.

George Beers of the MLC thoroughly rewrote the rules in 1867, making official a limit of twelve players per side, and named those positions: goal, point, cover point, first defense, second defense, third defense, centre, third attack, second attack, first attack, out home, and in home. Beers, known as "The father of Lacrosse," also replaced the hair-stuffed deerskin ball with a hard rubber ball and designed a stick better equipped for catching and accurately passing the ball.

Canada's National Lacrosse Association, also established in 1867, quickly adopted Beers' rules. The same year, a team from the Caughnawaga tribe went to England and played a game for Queen Victoria. The sport quickly became popular in such locales as Bristol, Cheshire, Lancashire, London, Manchester, and Yorkshire. The English Lacrosse Union was organized in 1892.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, lacrosse had pretty much died out in the northern United States, but was revived by the Onondaga tribe in the 1860s, influenced by the St. Regis tribe, which was still active in Canada.

White players in upstate New York began playing lacrosse around 1868, and the sport soon spread to the New York City area, where several teams were soon organized. The first intercollegiate game in the United States was in November 1877, pitting New York University against Manhattan College. Other colleges in the Northeast soon added teams, including Boston University, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and the Stevens Institute.

The U.S. Amateur Lacrosse Association adopted the Canadian rules upon creation in 1879, and seven colleges fromed the first Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association three years later. In 1905, the ILA was replaced by the Intercollegiate Lacrosse League, which renamed itself the U.S. Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA) in 1929.

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was a major ice hockey college in the 1890s before lacrosse was introduced there in 1893 by students who had seen a game on Long Island, and lacrosse quickly became popular throughout Baltimore. In 1900, programs were developed for all age groups and the city has been a lacrosse hotbed ever since.

Ice hockey and lacrosse are actually closely connected. The rules of ice hockey were patterned after those of lacrosse, and many famous hockey players over the years are or were accomplished lacrosse players.

Until 1971, when the NCAA began conducting an annual tournament, a national collegiate champion was chosen by committee. A Division III championship began in 1980, and the Division II tournament is back after a hiatus from 1983 to 1992.

At many schools, lacrosse is a club sport -- in other words, the students run the team, independently of the college's athletic department. At some schools, club teams even coexist with varsity teams. The USILA, using rules similar to that of the NCAA, conducts an annual tournament for college club teams, and the National Collegiate Lacrosse League, founded in 1991 and based on more liberal eligibility rules (such as allowing anyone conected with the college, even the profs, to compete), does the same.

Thus far, we've concentrated on field lacrosse, and rightly so, since indoor lacrosse is based on the field game. Developed in Canada during the early 1930s, indoor lacrosse quickly made the outdoor game the less popular of the two, and even took the trophy field lacrosse gave to its annual champion. The Mann Cup, donated in 1910 by Sir Thomas Mann as a challenge trophy for the amateur field lacrosse champion, was transferred to box lacrosse by the end of the 1930s.

Several attempts have been made over the years to establish professional box lacrosse leagues, the first being the National Lacrosse Association of 1968. A first-class organization, it consisted of eight teams across Canada and the United States. The only weak point was that the Montreal Canadiens could not get dates from their NHL namesakes to use the Forum, and had to settle for a much smaller arena. After the season, Montreal again failed to rent out the arena for the following season. The Detroit Olympics, owned by Bruce Norris, soon folded and the league folded with it.

1969 brought another attempt, the Eastern and Western Professional Lacrosse Association. The league consisted of mostly the same teams that played in the NLA the year before, with the Montreal franchise moved to St. Catherines and the Olympics now in Kitchener. Players travelled by bus rather than by plane, as had been done in the NLA. The league failed after one year.

The same old group gave pro lacrosse another shot in 1972, as the National Lacrosse League, but once again couldn't get it together. Two years later, a new National Lacrosse League was formed, with teams in Maryland, Montreal, Philadelphia, Rochester, Syracuse, and Toronto. Philly won the regular season title, and Rochester won the playoffs. They were back in 1975, with Rochester, Syracuse, and Toronto gone and Long Island, Quebec, and Boston in their place. Quebec won the title, then the league died.

Finally, in 1987, two guys from Kansas (of all places!) started a league that survived more than a few years. The Eagle League, soon to be renamed the Major Indoor Lacrosse League, opened with a six game schedule and teams in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Washington, and Baltimore. Over the years, teams came and went, but the league, a centrally-owned operation promoted like pro wrestling, slowly grew.

In the summer of 1997, a rival league, the National Lacrosse League, was formed, and MILL quickly merged with it. The league grew quicker and eventually reached from coast to coast, but in the process, teams came and went more regularly. Labor relations also became more strained, culminating in the NLL's unilateral decision in October 2007 to cancel the upcoming season, only to "uncancel" nine days later, after owners and players settled on a long-term collective bargaining agreement. The league enters 2008 with twelve teams across the United States and Canada.