MISSOULA, MONT. - Game day in Missoula. High in the press booth, red lights blink to life as the commentators slide on their headsets and pull in their chairs, bracing themselves for the task at hand. Leaning forward slightly to take in as much of Washington-Grizzly Stadium as possible, one breaks the silence, clearing his throat before beginning the broadcast.
“We’ve got a beautiful Sunday for lacrosse here in Missoula for our PNCLL championship.”
Sunday? Lacrosse? PNC … what?
The University of Montana hosted the Pacific Northwest Collegiate Lacrosse League’s semi-final and championship games in two divisions as Missoula played host to the largest lacrosse event ever to be held in Montana this past weekend. Eight teams and over 200 players came to town for the festivities.
“It was an awesome turnout, we couldn’t have asked for a better result,” said University of Montana coach Kevin Flynn.
The weekend bore strong testament to the growth of the sport of lacrosse, both in Montana as well as the greater Northwest. The tournament began Saturday with a high school game played between Missoula’s Hellgate High and Spokane’s Gonzaga Prep. A well-played match drawing over 100 spectators, it was easy to forget that it was only the second high school match ever played in the state.
US Lacrosse, the sport’s national governing body, has seen its membership rise from 43,696 players, coaches, and officials in 1998 to 235,087 in 2007, a 538 percent increase in 10 years. “The growth has been huge across the board,” said Colleen Aungst of US Lacrosse. Though dramatic increases in player numbers are being seen at all age levels, the area expanding most rapidly is that of boys and girls high-school aged and younger. “All the other areas are sort of trying to catch up,” said Aungst.
The Pacific Northwest, an area not traditionally regarded as a lacrosse hotbed, is increasingly making a case for reconsideration largely thanks to its share of the sport’s participation explosion.
“I think a lot of it is just shear numbers,” said PNCLL president Jason Stockton. “Everyone’s always known there are tremendous athletes on the west coast, and now more and more of them are choosing lacrosse.”
With the increase in participation have come marked advances in the sport’s structure and level of play, strongly evidenced in the growth of the PNCLL. Now totaling 19 teams in the league’s two divisions, the PNCLL will be sending two teams to compete for the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association’s National Championship in Dallas’s Texas Stadium on May 17th.
