Portland Lumberjax

The Portland Lumberjax professional indoor lacrosse team played their final regular season game last night. It was fun seeing a typically outdoor sport being confined in a hockey style rink. The hits against the boards were pretty legit, and I could feel them shaking the bleachers in the second row.

To me, lacrosse is still a 'back east' sport, even though it has been wildly popular out here for years. And I still have a bit of an adversarial outlook towards it, being a spring sport that competes with the flow of athletes to the baseball diamond.

It is funny to see how a sport that was essentially a preppy boarding school sport, cultivate this punk/skater edge that the indoor professional game has. The entire game is narrated by some guy with a burly skater dude voice, soliciting the crowd to 'give it up.' The entire game is also sonically plastered in a soundtrack of Marylin Manson, Nine Inch Nails and other hardcore rock riffs that allow for little breathing room.

The result is a game that gives middle schoolers an excuse to yell, be crazy and approximate the general fervor that their middle school counterparts in the 1990's and before had for football and basketball. With hockey on a year to year death watch, I wonder if one of these second tier professional sports leagues (lacrosse, major league soccer) could legitimately vie for the fourth major league sport in America.

Time will tell, and Marylin Manson can keep our feet tapping in the interim.