Why? Why do we run back and forth night after night? Running so hard we
throw up. Running so hard your heart beat rings in your head, while your
lungs are grasping for air. Late nights, early mornings, Friday nights,
Saturday evenings, broken bones, torn muscles and deep bruises. We run
through it all. Because we live off our adrenaline, because the game
frees your spirit, because there is nothing like the party in the locker
room, because your invincible once you step on the floor, because a shot
can make you smile all night, behind the back , "Sniper", the battling
of the boards, the feel of the ball in your stick, and shoes running acrosse the floor is a
rhythm to live by, because its possible to run fast enough to leave all
your worries behind. Sweat is the cologne of our accomplishment. Why? Why
would someone push themselves so hard? It's not for the money, it's not
for the boys, and it's not for the fame. We play lacrosse because we love it.

Why do we fall in love with lacrosse? What happens?
At some deep level the reason lacrosse snags us is that good lacrosse is beautiful,
and it's difficult, and the two are related.
A team passing the ball to each other,
passing into empty space that is suddenly filled by a player who wasn't there two seconds ago
and who is running at full pelt
and who without looking or breaking stride catches the ball
back to a third player
who he surely can't have seen,
who, also at full pelt and without breaking stride,
then passes the ball, at say 60 miles an hour,
to land in the stick of a fourth player who has run 75 yards to get there
and who, again all in stride, jumps and catches the ball with his stick,
once you realize how hard this is, "you'll understand",
fires it with unbelievable power and accuracy toward a corner of the goal
just exactly where the goalkeeper isnt,
executing some complex physics entirely without conscious thought
and through muscle-memory, has expected it to be,
so that all this grace
and speed
and muscle
and athleticism
and attention to detail
and power
and precision
will never appear on a score sheet
and will be forgotten by everybody a day later —
this is the strange fragility, the evanescence of lacrosse.
It's hard to describe and it is even harder to do,
but it does have a deep beauty,
a beauty hard to talk about and that everyone watching a game discovers for themselves,
a secret thing,
and this is the reason why lacrosse,
which has so much ugliness around it and attached to it,
still sinks so deeply into us:
Because it is, it can be, so beautiful

dont tell me its just lacrosse
lacrosse is everything to me.
its not just a sport-
its a passion.
don't tell me its just a game-
because every game counts,
and there's always something on the line.
don't assume that its just something i do-
its everything i do,
its what i breathe.
don't think that I wont care if we lose-
because "every loss teaches you something;"
more then a win ever will.
so when you tell me its just lacrosse ...
know that its not just nothing-
its everything.