WHY???

Imagine you are watching the Super Bowl. The halftime show was amazing! The commercials are some of the best ever! But the game … the game is really hard to understand. It just doesn’t make sense and seems incredibly unfair to the players. You see, the NFL has decided to change their rules between the 20’s because of concern for player safety. Once a player crosses the 20 yard line, you can no longer tackle an opponent - you have to play 2 hand touch - but once they get inside the other 20 yard line you can tackle them again. Can you imagine a sport that requires players to completely change how they play the game in the middle of the field? That just seems ridiculous. Well leave it to women’s lacrosse to be the sport to do exactly that. 

Rather then simply enforce the existing rules (yellow card for slash, cross check, dangerous play, etc) the NCAA rules committee over-reacts and add more rules that completely change the game - and not for the better. Games are now longer. One of the best aspects of the game - the ride - has dramatically changed. Don’t get me wrong - I am a huge proponent of player safety. I have been arguing for years how we need to clean up the game. It’s a disgrace when you walk into an athletic training room the day after a game and see all the bruises on the arms and backs of our attackers and midfielders. Walk into an athletic training room at a school like Ohio State or Florida and you have no problem spotting the women’s lacrosse team because no other sport has athletes that are so beat up. And I don’t say this lightly - but our women’s lacrosse players look like domestic abuse victims. So I will 100% lead the charge saying women’s lacrosse needs to be safer - but changing how players can play between the restraining lines isn’t the way to do it.
So what needs to change? How about addressing the elephant in the room -the way the stick is being used in the women’s game. Let’s be real - the stick is what is the major danger! Whether it is a player swinging it in an uncontrolled manner as they try to check an opponent or how it is being used to play defense. Green cards in between the restraining line was a half hearted measure to give the appearance we care about player safety and want to make the game safer.  No we don’t!  The majority of the game is played inside each restraining line - if fact green cards have actually increased the amount of time the ball is in the offensive and defensive ends. What we need to do is make our rules more black and white so they are easier to enforce - and address the use of the stick ALL OVER THE FIELD. Let’s look at the wording of just one rule in NCAA women’s lacrosse: Cross Check - Initiating stick-to-body contact and using the shaft of the stick to hit, push or displace an opponent. Why do we write a rule that leaves so much room for interpretation? Wouldn’t cross check rule be a lot easier for an official to enforce, coaches to teach, fans to understand, and most importantly, much safer for our players, if it was written like this - “A player may not check an opponent with that part of the shaft of their stick that is between their hands, either by thrusting their stick away from their body or by holding it extended from their body.” Would changing the NCAA definition of a cross check make a lot of coaches upset - yes, it probably would. And I believe that is the number one reason the NCAA Rules Committee won’t do it. We are more concerned about the reaction of our coaches than actually making the game safer. So we will continue to do what we have for years and look for other ways to “make the game safer” and add new rules that don’t make sense rather than take the one single step that would do the most to protect the players and change how players are permitted to use the stick in the women’s game.