New sports bring new possibilities. Over the summer, Bloomington South renovated the soccer field. But it wasn’t just a switch from grass to turf, the renovation also included painting official girl’s lacrosse lines.
Lacrosse has been a club sport for both boys and girls in Bloomington since its founding in 2001. With the addition of the new lines, it sparks the question whether lacrosse will become a school sport anytime soon.
For the girls, the answer to this question is yes, but for the boys, progress has yet to come. Adding lacrosse lines to South’s field was just the first step to girl’s lacrosse becoming an Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) sport.
An emerging sport is not yet an IHSAA sport. Girls lacrosse is a sport that’s previously just been played in clubs rather than at schools, but has gained popularity and become an emerging sport, making it in the process of becoming a school sport.
Girls’ lacrosse isn’t the only emerging sport this year. IHSAA has also added girls flag football to the list of likely school sports. Girls flag football is essentially American football without the contact. In place of tackling, they substitute a flag that can be pulled from an opposing player. Flag football is all the fun, with a smaller chance of injuries. We haven’t seen South take any steps to add girls flag football, but we can hope to see progress in the future.
South’s athletic director JR Holmes said, “[w]hen you’re an emerging sport, that means you’re probably going to be named a full [school] sport next year. If the IHSAA has it as a sport, then [South] will try to have it as a sport.” He mentions examples of South picking up emerging sports as he said, “we had girls wrestling this year, we’ve added boys volleyball…”
As of right now, we haven’t been given much information on when exactly these sports will be playable at South, but Bloomington Pride Girls’ Lacrosse, which is the club team for high school girls interested in lacrosse, is making strides with the occasional access to South’s new turf field for fall offseason practices.
Bloomington Pride coach Leslie Cook said, “I think if girls lacrosse became a team at South it would give additional opportunities to girls at the school to gain more exposure to the sport… I think it can give some athletes who don’t have a sport to play in the spring an opportunity to play and stay active.”
Pride senior Alice Racek said “I think it’s really exciting that lacrosse lines are at South and that we might have the experience of playing at our home school, or eventually becoming a school sport.”
