Lacrosse, a game of speed, complexity, and nuance, is fast becoming a boom sport nationwide. Now, eight-time national championship coach David Urick shows players and coaches the pathways to lacrosse success!

North America's Indian peoples have always viewed competitive sport as something more than a pastime. The northeastern Indians' ball-and-stick game that would become lacrosse served both symbolic and practical functions-preparing young men for war, providing an arena for tribes to strengthen alliances or settle disputes, and reinforcing religious beliefs and cultural cohesion. Today a multimillion-dollar industry, lacrosse is played by colleges and high schools, amateur clubs, and two professional leagues. In Lacrosse: A History of the Game, Donald M. Fisher traces the evolution of the sport from the pre-colonial era to the founding in 2001 of a professional outdoor league-Major League Lacrosse-told through the stories of the people behind each step in lacrosse's development: Canadian dentist George Beers, the father of the modern game; Rosabelle Sinclair, who played a large role in the 1950s reinforcing the feminine qualities of the women's game; "Father Bill" Schmeisser, the Johns Hopkins University coach who worked tirelessly to popularize lacrosse in Baltimore; Syracuse coach Laurie Cox, who was to lacrosse what Yale's Walter Camp was to football; 1960s Indian star Gaylord Powless, who endured racist taunts both on and off the field; Oren Lyons and Wes Patterson, who founded the inter-reservation Iroquois Nationals in 1983; and Gary and Paul Gait, the Canadian twins who were All-Americans at Syracuse University and have dominated the sport for the past decade. Throughout, Fisher focuses on lacrosse as contested ground. Competing cultural interests, he explains, have clashed since English settlers in mid-nineteenth-century Canada first appropriated and transformed the "primitive" Mohawk game of tewaarathon, eventually turning it into a respectable "gentleman's" sport. Drawing on extensive primary research, he shows how amateurs and professionals, elite collegians and working-class athletes, field- and box-lacrosse players, Canadians and Americans, men and women, and Indians and whites have assigned multiple and often conflicting meanings to North America's first-and fastest growing-team sport.

To understand the aboriginal roots of lacrosse, one must enter a world of spiritual belief and magic where players sewed inchworms into the innards of lacrosse balls and medicine men gazed at miniature lacrosse sticks to predict future events, where bits of bat wings were twisted into the stick's netting, and where famous players were--and are still--buried with their sticks. Here Thomas Vennum brings this world to life.

An ancient Native American sport, lacrosse was originally played to resolve conflicts, heal the sick, and develop strong, virile men. In Lacrosse Legends of the First Americans, Thomas Vennum draws on centuries of oral tradition to collect thirteen legends from five tribes -- the Cherokee, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Seneca, Ojibwa, and Menominee. Reflecting the game's origins and early history, these myths provide a glimpse into Native American life and the role of the "Creator's Game" in tribal culture.

From the Great Game in which the Birds defeated the Quadrupeds to high-stakes contests after which the losers literally lost their heads, these stories reveal the fascinating spiritual world of the first lacrosse players as well as the violent reality of the original sport. Lacrosse enthusiasts will learn about game equipment, ritual preparations, dress, and style of play, from stick handling to scoring. They will discover how the "coach" -- a medicine man -- conjured potions to prevent game injuries or make the opponent's leg cramp as well as how early craftsmen identified the perfect tree -- marked by a lightning strike -- from which to carve a lacrosse stick.

The game is no longer played by large numbers of men on mile-long fields, and plastic, titanium, and nylon have replaced hickory and ash, leather, and catgut. As lacrosse continues to evolve, this collection will help us remember and understand its rich and complex history.

What does your kid want to do NOW? Girls' Lacrosse? What's that? Learn how to connect with your kid when she wakes up one day and is overtaken by the lacrosse fever that's sweeping across the country faster than you can say "What's a coverpoint?." Fifth Quarter Lacrosse brings you a parent guide that will give you the straight scoop on all the basics. Written by Jenni Lorsung, lacrosse mom extraordinaire and long-time USLacrosse volunteer, this book will take you from sideline courtesy-clapper to laxaholic guru.

The first team sport was given to the First Nations by the Creator. The first players called it "The Creator's Game." Flamethrowers, guardians of the game, were given special sticks by the Creator to teach and watch over the sport. But there was a betrayal, a Nation lost, and the Creator removed the Flamethrowers from the earth. But they left something behind... Kenny lives in a mining town located on the iron Range in Minnesota. His entire family plays hockey. Only one problem for Kenny, he hates hockey. Then fate finds Kenny in a cave where he discovers a stone box containing a special stick. Kenny seeks out a storyteller to find out the origin of the stick. Join Kenny as he searches for the story and discovers a dark side that he must face.

In We Showed Baltimore, Christian Swezey tells the dramatic story of how a brash coach from Long Island and a group of players unlike any in the sport helped unseat lacrosse's establishment. From 1976 to 1978, the Cornell men's lacrosse team went on a tear. Winning two national championships and posting an overall record of 42-1, the Big Red, coached by Richie Moran, were the class of the NCAA game. Swezey tells the story of the rise of this dominant lacrosse program and reveals how Cornell's success coincided with and sometimes fueled radical changes in what was once a minor prep school game centered in the Baltimore suburbs. Led on the field by the likes of Mike French and Eamon McEneaney, in the mid-1970s Cornell was an offensive powerhouse. Moran coached the players to be in fast, constant movement. That technique, paired with the advent of synthetic stick heads and the introduction of artificial turf fields, made the Cornell offensive game swift and lethal. It is no surprise that the first NCAA championship game covered by ABC Television was Cornell vs. Maryland in 1976. The 16-13 Cornell win, in overtime, was exactly the exciting game that Moran encouraged and that newcomers to the sport wanted to see. Swezey recounts Cornell's dramatic games against traditional powers such as Maryland, Navy, and Johns Hopkins, and gets into the strategy and psychology that Moran brought to the team. We Showed Baltimore describes how the game of lacrosse was changing-its style of play, equipment, demographics, and geography. Pulling from interviews with more than ninety former coaches and players from Cornell and its rivals, We Showed Baltimore paints a vivid picture of lacrosse in the 1970s and how Moran and the Big Red helped create the game of today.