Nationwide, the number of female lacrosse players is increasing at the same rate as male participants. Lou Capozzola

No one merely likes lacrosse; rather, people are divided into those who love it and the benighted masses who haven't yet been introduced to it. The love is perhaps most evident in the nearly 300 men's and women's club teams on college campuses, where players pay to play, sometimes up to $3,000 a year. Many club squads are so-called virtual varsities, with dazzling uniforms and national schedules. At Cal the main lacrosse fund-raiser -- a laxathon in which players take turns keeping a ball going on the quad for 100 hours -- doubles as a pageant of the players' devotion.

"Final Four weekend really is a pilgrimage," says Middlebury coach Erin Quinn, whose teams have won three Division III men's titles. "The last time we qualified, about half our team had to cancel reservations because they had planned on going anyway."

Laxheads celebrate any sighting of their game in the larger culture -- as Oz's sport in American Pie, in the background on Friends and on John Kerry's tie on the cover of Newsweek. Fans kite off to jamborees in Lake Placid, N.Y.; Las Vegas; Oahu; even Amsterdam (the Netherlands is one of 30 countries where lacrosse is played) that former Syracuse coach Roy Simmons Jr. calls "parties where a lacrosse game breaks out."

Issue date: April 25, 2005