The Colorado Baby Buffs will play against the Baby Blue in Lake Placid on Monday in a game at North Elba Athletic Fields. The demonstration of the US national team takes place in these fields. (Company Photo – Parker O’Brien)
LAKE PLACID – A faster version of lacrosse will be presented tonight in Lake Placid.
The Lacrosse Tournament of the Lake Placid Summit Classic will host a World Lacrosse Sixes demonstration with members of the US men’s and women’s national teams on Tuesday evening at the North Elba Athletic Fields.
Sixes is a new discipline or event within the sport of lacrosse that features a faster game of lacrosse. According to Lake Placid Summit Lacrosse, the game is played on a smaller field with fewer players, a shorter game length and a 30-second shot clock.
“When you watch the game, it’s kind of contagious. It’s very fast, a lot of the same things with skill and speed are there and it is played in 30 minutes compared to an hour and a half. “ Lake Placid Summit Classic co-founder George Leveille said. “The idea is to do it a lot faster.”
The World Lacrosse Sixes aims to bring lacrosse back as an official Olympic sport for the first time since 1908. Lacrosse was a sport in the 1948 Olympics, but it was a demonstration sport – a sport played to promote the sport, not officially an Olympic sport.
Leveille said there has been a movement in the past 15 to 20 years to get lacrosse back in the Olympics. The sport has now grown, with around 30 to 40 countries taking part in the upcoming World Games.
The US national teams that will present the new form of lacrosse in Lake Placid will take part in the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama.
Leveille hopes the new version of lacrosse will make it to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“The Olympics are very difficult to get started with because of things like cost and things like that.” said Leveille. “That’s why they encouraged the sport to change the way the game is played to be more accessible to more countries.”
The first step on the road to becoming an Olympic sport, according to Brittanica, an online encyclopedia, is recognition as a sport by the International Olympic Committee. As soon as a sport is recognized, it can receive the status of the International Sports Federation. After all, a sport must be officially -proved by the IOC as a sport for the Olympic Games.
“The game form they use for the Olympics is also a form that can be used to learn the sport. This is a very important connection “, said Leveille. “We teach young people, especially in unsupervised communities, inner cities and such places, to play on a small field with smaller players.”
Leveille said the demonstration was one of the first examples of the sport being played publicly in anticipation of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The demonstration will be the second of three events for the US National Sixes discipline teams. A third event with international competitions is planned for October at the USA Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, Maryland, according to the Summit Lacrosse Society.
With the Lake Placid Summit Lacrosse tournament going on, Leveille expects a good crowd as many of the tournament’s participants are likely to stay.
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