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Welcome to the Kelowna Minor Lacrosse Association! Take some time to look around this site where we answer most common questions parents, players, coaches and referees have about KMLA.
Check out the sponsors who support our Association. Please see the attached information on how you can support KMLA. Please support our valued sponsors!
What's happening
Thompson-Okanagan Minor Lacrosse Commission Event Calendar (2013 - Coming Soon) [PDF]
Lacrosse on TV / Dish / Internet
Families with TSN-2 can find the National Lacrosse League schedule here . Also see NLL games on demand (internet streaming).
Check out ESPN2 and ESPN.360 for Major League Lacrosse games and schedules.
For another window into the professional game, NCAA and high school lax check out Inside Lacrosse.
Lacrosse "101"
Lacrosse is called the “Fastest Game on Two Feet”. As a game, it is unparalleled in developing skill, speed, intelligence, fitness, endurance and dexterity. Lacrosse was officially declared Canada's National Summer Sport with the passage of the National Sports Act on May 12, 1994. It's even been profiled in prestigious magazines such as the New Yorker (e.g., "Spin Right and Shoot Left"), or read "The Gathering of the Tribes". Lacrosse players reading (and writing for) the New Yorker? Now that's progress!
Lacrosse is the oldest team sport in North America and possibly the world. It may have developed as early as the 1100s and since then has seen many modifications. In the traditional Native American version, each team consisted of about 100 to 1,000 men on a field that stretched from about 500 yards to a couple of miles long. These lacrosse games, played to give thanks to the Creator, lasted from sunup to sundown for two to three days straight.
Up until the 1930s all lacrosse was played on large fields outdoors. Around this time the owners of Canadian hockey arenas invented a reduced version of the game, called box lacrosse. Through this commercialization, in a relatively short period of time, box lacrosse became the dominant form of the sport in Canada. More recently field lacrosse has witnessed a revival in Canada as the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) began operating a collegiate men's league in 1985 that now includes 12 varsity teams. In the United States, the NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship (field version of the game) is the most attended NCAA Championship, outdrawing the Final Four of men's basketball.
The Canadian Lacrosse Association (CLA), founded in 1925, is the governing body of lacrosse in Canada. In 1935, the Mann Cup, the most prestigious lacrosse trophy in Canada, was contended for under box lacrosse rules for the first time. Previously, the national senior men's lacrosse championship, awarded since 1901, was competed for under field lacrosse rules. A few years later, in 1937, the Minto Cup, began being awarded under box lacrosse rules to the junior men's champions. Currently the Canadian Lacrosse Association oversees the Mann Cup, the Minto Cup, the Presidents Cup (Senior B national championship) the Founders Cup (Junior B national championship) all under box lacrosse rules.
In 1987 a professional box lacrosse league was started called the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League. Eventually this league would change its name to the National Lacrosse League and grow to encompass lacrosse clubs in twelve cities scattered throughout the United States and Canada. In the summer of 2001 a professional field lacrosse league known as Major League Lacrosse (MLL) was inaugurated. Initially starting with six teams the MLL has grown to a total of ten clubs located in major metropolitan areas throughout the United States. On July 4th 2008 MLL set the professional lacrosse attendance record when 20,116 fans attended a game at Invesco Field in Denver, Colorado.
Wayne Gretzky on Lacrosse...
"If sport has a high point of the year, it must be the first week of spring. When I was growing up, I used to love this time of year. It was when I put my hockey equipment away and I was absolutely ecstatic to see the end of the hockey season. One of the worst things to happen to the game, in my opinion, has been year-round hockey and, in particular, summer hockey. All it does for kids, as far as I can tell, is keep them out of sports they should be doing in the warmer weather. I could hardly wait to get my lacrosse stick out and start throwing the ball against the walls and working on our moves as we played the lacrosse equivalent to road hockey. All the good hockey players seemed to play lacrosse in those days and every one of them learned something from the game to carry over to the other - things athletes can only learn by mixing up the games they play when they are young."
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