Maryland's State Sport

http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/56244

The official state sport of Maryland, since 1962, had been jousting. Recently, since 2004, the official team sport is lacrosse.

With top DI college programs like Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, Loyola, Towson, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Mount Saint Mary's, and an array of D3 programs, Maryland is rich with lacrosse Dynasty. The article states that Lacrosse has been the fastest-growing NCAA sport over the past five years. Female and male participation has grown rapidly and in 1981-1982 there were only 930 in Division I. By 2005-2006, the numbers had increase to about 6,000 players playing at all divisions. Consequently, with more players comes more need for larger capacity.


The Big Ten Conference has started its own cable network, and the NCAA is adding thousands of new seats for March Madness. But if you wanted to see the real future of college athletics, then you needed to be in a dusty alley behind M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore over Memorial Day weekend. Gathered there was a small band of former college players who are quietly turning lacrosse into the next revenue-generating sport for the NCAA.

Lacrosse is still a relatively bottleneck sport, primarily played in the Mid-Atlantic east coast. But it is growing fast! In the Fall of 2009, Florida, South Carolina, and California will be introducing three more fully-funded woman's programs. I would give anything to be a junior in high school right now because new programs means lots of recruiting and athletic scholarships. This article touched on Baltimore and listed former players from Johns Hopkins that are trying to organize lacrosse events for the local youth in hopes of expanding on programs in order to build more interest in the sport which will in turn, form more programs that have the potential of being revenue-generating sports for the NCAA. As much as it is an enjoyable sport, it is a business-world, and I am very excited to see it grow.