Lacrosse in 2028 Games ‘huge’ for Manitoba

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This article was published 23/10/2023 (721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brighter days could be ahead for lacrosse in Manitoba with more young eyes expected to be on the sport when it returns to the Olympics in 2028.

On Monday, the International Olympic Committee announced Canada’s second national sport (along with cricket, flag football, baseball-softball and squash) would rejoin the program for the first time since 1908 at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

“This is huge. When you see sports in the Olympics, it almost adds some legitimacy to the sport,” said Matt Mason, executive director of the Manitoba Lacrosse Association. “I think in Manitoba, especially, lacrosse is kind of considered a fringe or secondary sport to the hockeys of the world.”

Lacrosse will be played in a relatively new (created in 2018) six-a-side format in Los Angeles. The new version is a hybrid between box and field lacrosse — six players playing on a 70-metre by 36m surface — that promotes more offence and caters more to skill and finesse.

The six-a-side game has made lacrosse more appealing to parents and accessible to youth, according to Mason.

“There’s not as much contact as there is in box or field lacrosse. I think one thing that parents look at when they see lacrosse, they think, ‘Wow, that’s a violent sport, I don’t want to put my kids in that,’ he said. “For the Olympics to be able to showcase a version of the game that is going to be attractive to a wider audience, I think is going to have a huge impact on participation numbers and interest in the sport.”

Manitoba saw more than 1,800 players 22 and under in lacrosse in 2023, a boost from 2019 when 1,200 people participated.

The smaller game will also reach more communities across the province, Mason explained. A standard box lacrosse roster consists of 21 players while field lacrosse requires 23 players to make a team. The hybrid version needs just 12 players to make a squad, which Mason hopes will grow participation across Manitoba.

“We don’t have the participation numbers that Ontario, B.C. and Alberta have so we can’t really compete at a national level in box or field lacrosse because we don’t have the depth. What we do have is a few very good athletes every year, so the Sixes game, all of our athletes might commit to the game a little bit more but they also might have an opportunity to win using this style of game on the national level,” he said

The province boasts an untapped pool of talent in the men’s and women’s games, but recent efforts could see more women picking up a lacrosse stick.

The Herd, a local grassroots program for women of all skill levels up to 19 years old, debuted in April and gained significant traction as the summer wore on. Women’s lacrosse also made its high school debut in Winnipeg this year, as Oak Park, Dakota and Sturgeon Heights fielded teams.

In 2022, Manitoba debuted a women’s team at the Canada Summer Games. The team went 4-0 in round-robin play. In August, the province sent a women’s field lacrosse team to the national championship for the first time in four decades and fielded a national U17 and U22 girls’ box lacrosse squad.

Lacrosse Canada’s ‘Sixes’ sector will meet later this month, then again at a later date with each provincial body to unveil more details about funding and the selection process leading up to the 2028 Olympics.

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

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