Dear Amanda,
We've both played lacrosse. We know about the absolutely ridiculous rules involving the women's "no contact" sport. But it almost makes the sport more challenging if you think about it. Instead of using contact and checks to maintain ball control, it's all strategy and mentally being stronger than the other team. In men's lacrosse their pocket is 5x bigger in their sticks and the fact that their goalies can have longer poles, thus resulting in much longer throws (especially from a goalie's standpoint), makes it a lot easier to get the ball from one end of the field to the other. Remember the one time that for practice instead of warming up by doing our regular passes with balls we used water balloons instead? It improved our stick skills so well because of the slack that we had to give every time we caught a balloon.
Sometimes I regret switching from girls' to guys' lacrosse, but in the end it definitely challenged me more. The ball can be thrown up to 90mph with the amount of whip boys have on their pockets compared to the girls average 60mph shots. And knowing that I wouldn't get punished for stepping out of my goal circle; Practically a dream come true. But at the same time, lacrosse goes back to the Native Americans, who used to play lacrosse instead of fighting war! They didn't hit each other or check each other's sticks. They played it more as a relaxation and meditation routine than a physical, rowdy sport. Women follow those rules and history a lot more closely.
It just feels like sometimes men and women should be allowed to do things the same way.
Peace out home-skillet.
-Rachael
I don't know the rules of LAX, but I agree that the rules should be the same for everybody.
ReplyDeleteI use to play lacrosse in middle school and I was always jealous that the boys were allowed to hit each other. However, I did save many bruises from appearing all over my body! haha. I do believe that rules should be the same in every sport.
ReplyDeleteI like how clear and explanatory your tone is here; I also like your tie-in to the history of the sport. Interesting; it makes me wonder how many other sports we have where we've deviated from the original purpose or spirit of it.
ReplyDeleteI played LAX in high school too. I agree that the rules are really unfair. Not that I want hitting people to be ok and not against the rules, but because of the principle of fairness.
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