TE ene Tey eth: 


AN AMERICAN SPORT FOR AMERICANS on ae 
the team. A successful system demands 
that each man shall be in the right place at 
the right time, and good stick-handling, 
which latter requires that every player be 
absolutely sure when receiving and passing 
the ball. A miss or an inaccurate pass on 
the part of a player at a critical moment 
breaks up the system and often means a goal 
for his opponents. As a man learns to sub- 
ordinate his individual peculiarities to the 
welfare of the team, the more valuable he 
becomes as a player. No team of individual 
players can hope to defeat a team on which 
the men play together; and brute strength 
cannot overwhelm speed and head-work. 
It is in continually and cleverly dodg- 
ing, and this with a minimum of effort, that 
the attack and home players gain the most, 
and supplementing this with several good, 
snappy systems of passing, and with good 
stick-handling, they can keep the opposing 
defense, point players and the goal keeper 
busy. In this the game strongly resembles 
basketball. For whoever has witnessed a 
game of baskethall knows that it is difficult 
indeed to defend a goal that is attacked by 
players who play their positions swiftly, 
unerringly and yet without apparent effort, 
ducking, dodging and passing the ball with 
the exasperating sang froid and skill of the 
expert player. But everything dces not come 
the way of the artfully dodging attack 
player, the best of systems and stick work 
notwithstanding. For, checking with his 
stick and with his body, in which there are 
tricks that are as sly as they are effective, 
the opposing defense or point player is 
busy trying to break up that beautiful 
system. When he so checks, with his body 
backed by plenty of determination, a flying 
attack player and spills him thitherward on 
the greensward on the back of his neck, that 
system goes a glimmering, to be replaced 
by another, which proceeds forthwith and 
with the ball toward the other goal. Our 
fallen hero will land on his feet on the 
second bounce, if he be of the sort that 
makes lacrosse players, and bethink him- 
self to not speed so swiftly and to dodge 
more skilfully when hovering near his friend 
the enemy. . 
Needless to say, there is much unneces- 
sary rough play where the game is between 
unskilful and inexperienced players. As in 
boxing, the most effectual stick checking 
calls more for skill than for physical effort. 
The raw player will smash away in truly 
vicious fashion, yet rarely succeed in doing 
more than tiring himself and bruising his 
opponent needlessly. And again, as in box- 
ing, a rule that old lacrosse players know is 
‘“‘when attempting to dodge an opponent or 
he intends to try to dodge you, watch his 
eyes and not his stick.” Furthermore, a 
player must learn how to receive a severe 
body check with a minimum of resistance, 
as a boxer learns to keep “‘loose on his 
pins”’; must acquire the knack of making 
his weight count in body checking another 
player, as a boxer does whenever he lands a 
blow; must learn how to upset a runner 
without himself falling, and when he does 
fall must know how to take the grass easily 
—if such is possible in lacrosse. It will be 
seen that the game is not to be learned in an 
afternoon. Once learned, however, it never 
loses its charm, and though by and bya 
man will hang up his stick for good and all, 
he never outlives being a lacrosse player. 
At present, lacrosse is played by several 
Eastern universities, notably Columbia, 
Harvard, Cornell and Johns Hopkins. To 
see the game at its best, however, one must 
cross the border into the ‘“‘Land of the 
Maple Leaf,” for there is the home of 
lacrosse. Compared with the game between 
two junior teams of Canada, a game be- 
tween the average teams of the States more 
resembles hockey than lacrosse—for our 
lacrosse players rarely ever see the game 
before entering college, and in the fourth 
year at college a man is just beginning to 
understand the game. 
Every recurring season brings it more 
popularity, however. Wideawake Ameri- 
cans who are in a position to judge declare 
that beside lacrosse, baseball is dreary, foot- 
ball stupid. But they are not of America— 
why shouldn’t they be dreary and stupid ? 
When we get to playing lacrosse among the 
grammar schools and academies we shall 
develop college teams that will give exhibi- 
tions of this typically American game that 
will earn for it the credit which is its due— 
that of being the best game in the world for 
young men with red blood in their veins. 
