Ingemi: A Word About Professional Lacrosse

I’ve had a lot to say about the PLL and all the other lacrosse leagues. Here is my biggest gripe with professional lacrosse at ANY level. NALL was a great idea at first. Develop American players. In Canada they have their Juniors and Senior leagues and the NLL, the real pro indoor league, is full of Canadians. Not many Americans because there is no where for Americans to learn the game.

NALL was going to provide that. Heck, they still can. Then the PLL happened. Before that it was the World Lacrosse League. We have the MILA, we have CLax. Casey Powell wants to start a pro league. Heck, MILA even tried to start MILA Pro.
Lacrosse isn’t a big sport. It’s not baseball. Even in baseball, independent leagues fold every day.

Lacrosse might never get to the level of MLB or even the NHL. That’s not the point. The point is, if lacrosse at the professional level continues like this, it CAN’T ever get to that level. Maybe it won’t anyways, but if it can, we will never know.

Because the NLL, MLL and NALL, in my mind, the three most important leagues, are doing something. NLL is the pro indoor league. MLL is the pro outdoor league. NALL is the American development league for the NLL. That makes sense. That is growth.
Growth is not the PLL. Growth is not a four team league allowing Canadians to play in what was meant to be an American league. What that is detrimental to the pro levels growing.

Stop trying to make your own league everyone. It will fail every time over. Because lacrosse isn’t even big enough for the major leagues to be completely stable. Even the NHL isn’t big even to be stable at all levels.

Lacrosse is what it is. If you care about it, support the leagues that exist. All the time and energy that goes into the PLL? That could have been used to grow NALL into a developmental league, or to grow the NLL into a legitimate major sports league. Instead the past nine months have been used to get nothing done. It’s been spent on lies and empty promises.

That’s what people want to call growth, and that is why lacrosse will never be a major sport. Get up and support the leagues that exist. That’s the lacrosse that will represent our game at the professional level for years. Starting these other leagues hurts them. You’re hurting the game. That’s what the PLL did.

Instead of uniting players, like NALL intended to, the PLL pitted players against themselves and their team mates. Some players couldn’t play in both leagues. It was a battle for them to decide who to chose. No. That’s not right. NALL was meant to combine field players with learning box players to create an American base of box players. Uniting the sport at it’s elite level.

The PLL wasn’t that. If it goes on, it won’t be that, either. It will pit player against player and league against league. Time, energy and money spent on competing will be wasted instead of used to grow the leagues we have in place.

Grow the game. That’s what everyone says. At the pro level, I don’t see anyone trying to grow this with the PLL. I see lies and pain for everyone in professional lacrosse.

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