The great and noble sport of lacrosse—known to its practitioners as a game of skill, speed, and bruised shins—has long been played by the youth of Nevada, though you would hardly know it from glancing at the official state-sanctioned sports. There, one finds football, where the players crash into one another with the enthusiasm of runaway cattle; basketball, where men grow as tall as the law of nature will allow; and even skiing, which is little more than a refined way to fall off a mountain.
But lacrosse? Nowhere to be found.
A few days ago, an army of high school lacrosse players descended upon the legislature, not to raid it–though the idea is not without merit–but to support Senate Bill 305, a measure that would grant their beloved sport the recognition it deserves under the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA). Such recognition would bestow upon lacrosse official funding, oversight, and dignity enjoyed by lesser sports.
“It’s an incredible opportunity,” declared Justin Cutler, President of the High Sierra Lacrosse League, who seemed perplexed that a sport requiring both athleticism and a working knowledge of blunt objects had not already been deemed worthy of officialdom.
Reno High School Senior Maggie Grimes, a team captain, noted that formal recognition might even lure college recruiters westward, granting scholarships to those who lack the funds for “academics and stuff”—an honest appraisal of higher education’s function.
But like all endeavors, resistance is being met–and in this case–tits the NIAA.
Executive Director Tim Jackson, speaking on behalf of bureaucracy everywhere, declared that the bill is unopposed because of the sport but because it attempted to “skip the line,” a phrase which suggests that the NIAA maintains a grand queue of sports patiently awaiting their turn—perhaps just behind competitive lawn darts and synchronized pogo-sticking. More gravely, Jackson worried about the “disproportionality of funding,” insisting that “no one sport is greater than another,” a sentiment that must come as quite a surprise to the football teams of Nevada.
Supporters of the bill countered that they have been waiting for a decade—ten long years of toil, sweat, and sore muscles—for the NIAA to take action, only to find themselves stuck behind an unmoving bureaucratic ox-cart. And so, the matter now heads to a work session in the Senate Committee on Education before making its way through the labyrinth of government, where it may yet emerge victorious—or trampled beneath the hooves of political inertia.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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