Golf: USC Captures Women’s Golf Title (May 22, Albuquerque, NM) The Trojans won the 2008 Women’s Golf Championship event by six-strokes over UCLA and claimed their first women’s golf national championship since 2003.

Lacrosse: Wildcats Top Penn for NCAA Championship (May 25,  - Towson, MD) With help from textbook offensive execution, pristine passing and stout goaltending, the Northwestern Wildcats won their fourth consecutive NCAA championship Sunday, beating Penn, 10-6.

Tennis: Georgia Tech’s Amanda McDowell Wins NCAA Singles Crown (May 26, Tulsa, OK)  All-American Amanda McDowell completed her run through the NCAA Singles Championships by capturing a straight-set win over Baylor’s Zuzana Zemenova in the finals to become the first Yellow Jacket tennis player to earn an individual national championship.

Softball: The Hokies Have Arrived (May 28, Oklahoma City, OK) The Virginia Tech softball team has finally made it to Oklahoma City for the program’s first-ever Women’s College World Series.

Rowing: Division I Rowing Championships (May 20, Indianapolis, IN) The NCAA  has selected the teams that will compete in the 2008 Division I Women’s Rowing Championships including defending champion Brown. UC Berkeley will serve as host May 30 through June 1st.

We’re mighty! We’re crazy!
We’re never, ever lazy!
We’ll beat you! Defeat you!
We’ll even try to eat you!
We’ll cover you in hot sauce, cuz we’re the best at lacrosse.
Gooooo…. ( Team Name.)

Let’s go (Team Name)
It’s time to score.
Check out those (Opposing Team)
And rock ‘em to the core.
You might think we’re cocky.
But we’re the best at field hockey.
Gooooo….. (Team Name).

(more…)

Lacrosse programs began in eastern preparatory schools and have expanded to public and parochial schools nationwide. Since January 2000 alone, four states (California, Georgia, Illinois and Minnesota) have sanctioned lacrosse. The NFHS reported 74,225 male and female students played in 2001, a 20 percent increase from 2000 and better than a 100 percent increase since 1995.

Women’s Participation - College and University

The evolution of the Native American game into modern lacrosse began in 1636. At that time, some type of lacrosse was played by at least 48 Native American tribes scattered throughout southern Canada and all parts of the United States. French pioneers began playing the game avidly in the 1800s. Canadian dentist W. George Beers standardized the game in 1867 with the adoption of set field dimensions, limits to the number of players per team and other basic rules.

The first women’s lacrosse game was played in 1890 at the St. Leonard’s School in Scotland. Although an attempt was made to start women’s lacrosse at Sweet Briar College in Virginia in 1914, it was not until 1926 that Miss Rosabelle Sinclair established the first women’s lacrosse team in the United States at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, Maryland.

Men’s and women’s lacrosse were played under virtually the same rules, with no protective equipment, until the mid-1930s. At that time, men’s lacrosse began evolving dramatically, while women’s lacrosse continued to remain true to the game’s original rules. Men’s and women’s lacrosse remain derivations of the same game today, but are played under different rules. Women’s rules limit stick contact, prohibit body contact and, therefore, require little protective equipment. Men’s lacrosse rules allow some degree of stick and body contact, although violence is neither condoned nor allowed.