page_title: Lacrosse in Pennsylvania
section_title: College lacrosse beginnings
hierarchical_section_title: Lacrosse in Pennsylvania / College lacrosse in Pennsylvania / College lacrosse beginnings
caption_attribution_description: English: (original Navy caption): Midshipman 3rd Class Ian Dingman lifts the ball off the ground and away from University of Pennsylvania's Andrew Blechman during the first round action of the NCAA Lacrosse tournament. This is the first time since 1989 that the Navy (13-2), ranked number 2 in the nation, will advance to the second round of the Div. I NCAA Lacrosse Tournament, following an opening-round 11-5 victory over 13th-ranked Penn (7-7) Sunday at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
context_page_description: Lacrosse has been played in Pennsylvania since the 19th century. There are many respected amateur programs at the club, college, and high school level, as well as several respected past and present professional teams in the National Lacrosse League and Major League Lacrosse.
context_section_description: The first lacrosse team in North America was the Montreal Lacrosse Club, established in Montreal, Quebec, Canada by dentist, Dr. William George Beers. Montreal Lacrosse Club created the first set of written rules of the game of lacrosse. In 1860, Beers wrote up the codes, rules of the game, reducing the length of games and limiting the number of players to 12 per side. The first game played under these new rules was at Upper Canada College in 1867, where Upper Canada lost to the Toronto Cricket Club 3–1.
  Intercollegiate lacrosse in the United States can trace its roots to 1877 when New York University beat Manhattan College two to zero. Also in 1877, the Boston Lacrosse Club started up at Harvard, though a true varsity team at Harvard was not established until 1880. In 1879, the United States Amateur Lacrosse Association was formed by John R. Flannery, a well-known Canadian club player to coordinate the efforts of private, amateur lacrosse clubs in several Northeast cities, including one club that formed in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Flannery had grown up in Canada, been a member of the Montreal Shamrocks Lacrosse Club, and subsequently moved to the United States where he played for a number of amateur east coast clubs. In 1878 he organized a game billed as the National Championship between Union Lacrosse Club and Ravenswood Lacrosse Club of New York City. Encouraged by the turnout of some 40,000 spectators, Flannery set about organizing the disparate lacrosse clubs into a cohesive organization. Ravenswood Lacrosse Club with John Flannery went on to influence lacrosse at several other colleges, playing a well-publicized game against New York University in 1879.
  In 1881, the first true varsity level intercollegiate lacrosse tournament was held, with Harvard defeating Princeton in the final, 3-0. This series led to the formation of a league in 1882, known as the Inter-Collegiate Lacrosse Association (the ICLA, later the ILA), which included New York University, Columbia, Princeton and Harvard. At the same time, Flannery's United States Amateur Lacrosse Association comprised eleven college and club teams, but by 1886 the number of clubs had risen to greater than 40. College organizations, including a varsity team at Lehigh University, soon were seeking admittance to the ILA. Lehigh fielded its first varsity squad in 1885, with the University of Pennsylvania, and Lafayette College at the club level, following suit in 1890. Lehigh and Swarthmore were accepted as members in the ILA in 1888 and 1891, respectively.
  The first tournament for lacrosse supremacy during this period was known as the Oelrichs Cup, sponsored by Hermann Oelrichs, and first offered up in a tournament format in 1881. Oelrichs was the first president of the United States National Amateur Lacrosse Association, a precursor to the USILA, and he was a member of the New York Lacrosse Club. The Oelrichs Cup was played for much of the 1880s, played mostly by amateur non-scholastic clubs though Princeton did field a tournament team. Arnold K. Reese as part of a powerful Baltimore lacrosse club, won the Oelrichs Cup in 1890. At this time also, Reese had been the main force behind starting up varsity lacrosse at Lehigh. Reese's efforts would lead to Lehigh being one of the early college lacrosse powers. Reese played for Lehigh from 1888 to 1891, winning an ILA title in 1890.
caption: Penn plays Navy in the first round of the 2004 NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship
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