I have been casually watching some of the NCAA Lacrosse Championships, Mens and Womens. I know virtually nothing about lacrosse, its rules or its strategies, but I have noticed that the guys all wear helmets with face guards while the gals wear only goggles, and perhaps some mouth gear.
Are there big rule differences where the men need more head protection than the women? I am thinking of rules like “high sticking”; it might be allowed in the mens game (and thus more dangerous) while not allowed at all in the ladies game.
I know nothing about the game, really, but having bartended for a while at a college bar near Duke University, I can tell you that women lax players can drink their male counterparts under the table, and do, regularly.
Perhaps the ladies just aren’t as worried about getting their brains addled?
Hitting isn’t allowed in women’s lacrosse. In fact, an offensive player can not even shoot the ball if a defender is between her and the goal.
Women’s lacrosse is the lamest bastardization of a sport I’ve ever seen.
The men’s game is brutal. I’ve been knocked unconscious in a game; teammates and opponents have had bones broken from hits. We wear padding to protect from some of that, but our pads really aren’t that big. It’s nowhere near as protective as hockey or even football padding.
And hmmm, females Dukies Lax players can drink the male Dukie counterparts under the table? I am not sure what that says the most about, the Dukes or the Dukettes.
Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse have a relationship less like Men’s and Women’s Basketball, and more like the relationship between Men’s Baseball and Women’s Softball (but perhaps even more divergent). They share superficial similarities, in that the game is played on a rectangular field, and you use a net on the end of a stick to propel a ball into a goal; but the nature of the game, its details, and strategies are so different that if the games went by differing names they would seem only distantly related.