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.

This year’s contenders, Western Oregon University and Canada’s Simon Fraser University, will look to match or surpass last season’s conference success in Texas, when PNCLL teams were featured in both division’s title games. The Oregon Ducks fell to BYU in last year’s Division I championship, while Flynn’s Griz took home the Division II crown.

Montana and Oregon squared off for a semi-final bout Saturday with some 800 people packing Montana’s South Campus Stadium for the game. The crowd, easily marking the largest to ever witness a lacrosse game in the state’s history, cheered the Griz to a hard fought 11-16 loss against the #2 seeded Ducks.

“It was a huge success for our program, even though we didn’t end up coming away with a win,” said Flynn. “It’s great for this state and city to get to see the level of play we’ve got here in the Northwest.”

Fans outside of Missoula enjoyed a unique opportunity to follow the action as well, as the Division 1 semi-final contests as well as both championship matches were broadcast live over the internet via the Griz’s website. The site registered over 3,000 hits during Sunday’s championship games coverage, according to GrizLax.com web-master Will Moss.

The web-cast featured live video of the games accompanied by commentary from Stockton and former University of Idaho coach and Montana alum Ryan Hanavan.

The two were an appropriate duo to cover the event, having both played instrumental roles in the growth the sport of lacrosse has enjoyed in the Pacific Northwest over the last 10 years. Hanavan came to The University of Montana from New York in the late 90’s, and found a club team far different from the one seen in Missoula this weekend.

“When I first arrived on campus, there was a club team, but it wasn’t really going in any direction,” Hanavan said. “I just started calling teams, picking up scrimmages wherever we could, and eventually we put a season together and actually went undefeated.” In 1999, Hanavan, then a student at Montana, traveled to Seattle and successfully petitioned for admission into the PNCLL.

Since joining the league the Griz have won three conference titles in Division II, and moved up to the more competitive Division I for this season. That the team continues to enjoy success despite its unconventional roots and location has surprised many, but not Flynn.

“Lacrosse is perfect for Montana,” said Flynn. “The thing that has surprised me about introducing the sport here is the level of passion that some kids have. I didn’t know that for some kids all you have to do is put a stick in their hands one time and they take it from there.”

Where exactly they’re headed remains to be seen.