Evening star., 1930-06-01
BACK to the SPORT Of the INDIANS
Rugged Game of Lacrosse, First Played ON
NorthAmerican Continent by the Prlmiti0e
Redskins, Groz0ing in Popularity.

referee of the Southern District of the Inter
collegiate Association. He was referee of all
the Olympic tryouts in the United States when
Johns Hopkins beat Army Navy, Maryland and
Rutgers in the finals and went across the At
lantic in 1928 to represent the United States in
the Olympic games
Lacrosse is by no means a sectional game.
1t is national in its scope, in so far as the
United States is concerned, and international
so far as the world is concerned" said Mr.. Korn
"In addition to all the Eastern and Southern
colleges and universities mentioned previously
the game Is played extensively throughout the
Middle West and on the Pacific Coast. I esti-
mate the number of prep schools to total about
100. Several dozen clubs play it. The lacrosse
season in this country lasts from about the
middle of April until the middle of June, as far
as the schools are concerned"
How are so many men hurt in lacrosse?"
1 asked Mr. Korn.
"By sheer careleSsneSS or else by not learning
to play the game properly" he replied.
"Al CornSweet got a bad cash this Spring
while playing with the Oxford Cambridge team
of England against Lehigh. He preferred to
play without headgear and ducked into man
who was throwing the ball. He was struck
across the head with his opponents stick and
had to have five stitches put in. Cornsweet,
like so may lacrosse players is a former we'll
known foot ball star. He was captain of that
famous Brown eleven of a few years ago called
the iron team" which beat several of the large
universities. He IS Rhodes scholar in
England"
The Oxford-Cambridge team arrived in
America March %. It lost its first game to
st. Johns of Annapolis, 7-2 but defeated
Navy, which had not lost on its home grounds
for several years. The score was 5-4
In subsequent games the English invaders de-
feated Virginia, Washington College, Swarth-
more. Lehigh Army, Syracuse and Union and
lost to University of Pennsylvania.
A trophy-the Flannery Cup-was provided
anu
land and the United States. The last English
team to invade our shores took the cup back
with 1t in 1922, but Syracuse went abroad two
years later and brought it back to the United
States.
couldn't erase from my mind the picture of
that initial game I saw between Navy and
Hopkins, when man after man was carried off
the field because of injuries.
us 1t necessary for lacrosse player to be
rough to be a starr" I asked Mr.. Korn.
Not at ALL" he replied producing letter
from friend who had seen the game between
the Army and Oxford Cambridge teams
EE'T' ME Army played preliminary game with
Hobart which was pretty rough affair,
with some very heavy body checking most of
which was legitimate but overdone," wrote his
friend.
"The first half of the Army -Britisher game
was good and clean. The Englishmen were far
too clever for the bigger and stronger Army
men, and the first half ended Al in favor of
the English. The Army tried to check harder
and charge the men more in the second half.
They laid three or four of them out cold, but
1t was simply a case of knocking their wind
out and they revived and went on with the
game. In most cases the checks were perfectly
legitimate, but four five Army men were put
out for tripping or checking from behind and
there were no penalties against the English
NH u.
they looked, as the Englishmen simply took
their time and worked the ball in without any
unnecessary effort and certainly made the
Army team look very crude"
"That account of a game is in itself an
answer to your question" continued Mr.. Korn.
Lacrosse is like foot ball boxing or wrestling,
in that science will usually triumph over force.
How many times have you while watching a
boxing match, wondered how the skillful fighter
can keep evading the rushes of the brusing
fighter who keeps coming in but seldom lands
effective punch? There science triumphs,
and so it is in lacrosse
T ACROSSE is the oldest known athletic con-
test played on the American Continent and
one Of the Oldest organized games in the world
When the first settlers arrived in this country
they found the Indians playing game which,
next to war, held the chief place in their IN
terest. 1t has been suggested that lacrosse was
taught them by the NorSemen, but study of
the Catlin records of Indian life shows the
game to have been so widely distributed among
the various tribes and so diverse in type Of
playing implement that there is little doubt it
was of native origin, developing slowly through
many generations. The French coloniSts saw in
its chief implement-the stick-a strong re-
semblance to a bishops crozier and gave it the
name of "ls crosse" which it has since borne.
The game played by the Indians was a
form of war maneuver in which whole tribes
were pitted against each other. The goals were