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.