To get a feel for how hard they smack each other with their crosses, take a baseball bat and have a friend lovingly break your wrist.

On a warm Saturday evening in Milwaukee, the Menomonee Valley was as quiet as could be expected. The casino wasn’t packed, Canal Street was nearly empty and most of the noise was coming from I-94 half a mile away.

There wasn’t much in the way of action until about 4 p.m. Then the Valley was electric.

No, there wasn’t some lightning storm that was missed by the entire East Side. Down at Valley Fields, a sport that has flourished on the east coast for years was budding in Cream City.

Milwaukee, prepare yourselves for lacrosse.

I experienced my first lacrosse game last weekend. Usually, I take a new sport in small doses, but I dove right in and attended every game that the Milwaukee Panther Lacrosse Club participated in during the Marquette Border Bash Tournament from Sept. 20 through the 22.

It wasn’t because I was covering the matches; indeed, I ended up covering the championship game because of writer Mitch Gallagher’s inability to attend. However, I made it to every game because I just fell in love with the sport.

A combination of hockey, football and quidditch, lacrosse is a fast-paced sport that won over at least one fan this weekend.

Lacrosse has ten players to a side, a goalie and a lot of sticks called crosses. Teams butt heads by throwing a baseball-sized rubber ball up and down the field, trying to score on goal, akin to hockey and soccer. The other team can try to stop them by any means necessary.

Players wear shoulder pads, wrist guards and gloves, which allows for defenders to go completely ballistic, body-checking and whacking the ball-carrier on the forearm.

To get a feel for how hard they smack each other with their crosses, take a baseball bat and have a friend lovingly break your wrist.

That’s why players’ arms are dressed like those of a storm trooper.

While the Panther Lacrosse team was running around barreling into opposing teams’ players and scoring goals, I was paying attention to the way players were communicating with each other.

Guys on the teams knew each other, as if lacrosse was somewhat of a fraternity in Wisconsin. There aren’t many lacrosse teams in the state, and the WIAA doesn’t have a championship for the sport yet.

Yet with the sport’s growing popularity outside the Ivy League, it shouldn’t be long before the high school community starts to pick up and forces the WIAA to adopt the fastest-growing sport for its lineup of sports.

Major League Lacrosse has grown exponentially since its inception in 2001, and the NCAA has already been all over the sport since 1971.

While the sport is relatively new to the Third Coast, lacrosse has been a big-time attraction out east for a long time. NFL Hall of Fame member Jim Brown was arguably the greatest lacrosse player of all time at Syracuse. Funny as it seems, Syracuse is the furthest west that a national champion has been crowned by the NCAA.

Back in the 19th century, John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny”. Go westward, young man. So far, lacrosse players who have done well for themselves on the high school level and younger have flipped that saying around, enrolling at lacrosse powerhouse universities such as Johns Hopkins, Virginia and Duke.

Female lacrosse players have found a home closer to Wisconsin, however, at the site of arguably the greatest athletic program in the history of the NCAA, Northwestern.

However, without a big-time men’s program in the Midwest, there is nothing but room for a powerhouse to emerge in lacrosse right here.

Notre Dame and Ohio State participate in the Great Western Lacrosse League, but are the only Midwestern schools to do so on the Division I level.

Who knows, maybe the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee might do itself some good by looking into adding the sport. Engelmann Field could be easily fitted for lacrosse, and following initial costs such as equipment, the main expenditures would be recruitment and travel.

With high schools in the Madison area such as Middleton fielding lacrosse teams, and colleges such as Whitewater, Milwaukee and Marquette sporting club teams, how much recruiting money would it take to get Wisconsin youngsters to commit to a Milwaukee D-I lacrosse team?

They’d be lining up by the dozen in the first year alone. With so little competition in this area of the country, fielding a competitive team wouldn’t take five years - it could be almost immediate.

An inexpensive sport that draws fans is a good idea, and unlike football, lacrosse could be started on both sides of the gender wall, nullifying any problems with Title IX. Unlike other sports at UWM, lacrosse is a revenue-producing sport.

The NCAA Lacrosse Championships in May made more money at the gate than the Final Four for basketball. While the sport is an exciting game on the club level, it would be even more so if this university were to sponsor it on the NCAA Division I level.

At the very least, lacrosse deserves a look from UWM brass. If they don’t, someone should give ‘em a good whack with the crosse.

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