The amazing thing about the “thing that surprised me” was that I was literally living within it. For the longest time, lacrosse has been associated with as a northeast sport. Little by little though it’s made its way out of that region and into the southland — especially Georgia.

Lacrosse has been n Georgia for a while, mainly substantiated by club teams representing high schools. But in the 2005 it’s popularity grew so much that the Georgia high school Association was forced to make it a sanctioned sport. And since then it has only caught on like wildfire. In 2005 there were 45 total teams (boys’ and girls’) competing in the ghsa. Next year, there will be 100 boys’ and 104 girls’ varsity programs.

Lacrosse Magazine recently did a piece chronicling the journey of one former Georgia high school player Scott Ratliff who went to Walton high school and graduated in 2009. His dream was to come back from Loyola University and increase the popularity of the game where he was from. But to his surprise, when he got back the popularity had skyrocketed. Similar to Ratliff, Liam Banks was on a mission to spread the sport of lacrosse. The former Syracuse all-American saw an opportunity to pioneer lacrosse in Georgia, which is why he started his club, LB3, back in 2006.

And although everyone can see that lacrosse is trending upwards in Georgia, no one has really done research as to why. This is what I would like to do for my solo project. The numbers are there, but why is this happening? I think it is something interesting to look into and see how this could be affecting other sports as well.

It’s hard for me to explain why I like Bill Simmons because originally I thought he was a pompous, arrogant journalist who thought banging his chest would get him noticed. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I understand Simmons may be considered more of a blogger, but he goes about it in a journalistic way — reporting facts and using observation at live events instead of making assumptions.

My favorite article by Simmons was “Daring to ask the PED Question.” The article came out in 2013 addressing the often under-talked about use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. I got really into this article because he cited examples of possible PED usages that all my friends commonly talk about. And just like Simmons and his co-workers, the topic is rarely publicly brought up.

Simmons goes into examples of league’s that use different methods to make it harder for their athletes to get caught cheating. While this has changed, Simmons is able to pinpoint scenarios that make you question both athletes and the leagues they play for.

My second favorite Simmons article was the “Consequences of Caring.” While this one is more of a relaxed story, I still found it refreshing for the impact that sports journalists can have on people. He tells the story of being a sports fan through his daughter’s eyes and the passion and mostly heartbreak that goes along with it.

As the article gets into its latter stages, he reverts back to why he wanted to become a sports journalist in the first place — sports have the ability to move people in a way unlike anything else in our society. It reminded me of why I wanted to get into sports journalism too.

Interestingly enough, Simmons brash attitude is what eventually drew me back to his writing. He wasn’t afraid to make people uncomfortable or point out the elephant in the room. He’s made many people angry in his time as a sports journalist and that is something I feel like many journalists struggle with. They are afraid about being everyone’s friend instead of reporting what needs to be said and Simmons just isn’t like that.