Lacrosse gains IHSA recognition for 2010-11 school year

Boys and girls lacrosse will no longer be on the outside looking in at official IHSA competition.

The IHSA Board of Directors approved a recommendation at its Tuesday meeting to adopt an official state series for boys and girls lacrosse beginning with the 2010-11 school term. The official regular season, state series and state finals will be contested in the spring.

The Board created a contingency that 65 boys and 40 girls teams must be registered to participate in the state series by the Feb. 1, 2011 spring sport deadline to crown state champions in 2010-11. According to the IHSA emerging sports list, those are the respective number of schools currently fielding boys and girls teams.

"The Board felt it was important to put contingencies in place to preserve the esteem of the tournament and crowning a state champion, even if it has the possibility of delaying the start of the state series until beyond 2010-11," said IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman in a statement. "Regardless, we feel like the IHSA's endorsement of the sport will help bring more legitimacy to club and intraumural programs around the state and that many more schools will field squads in the coming years."

According to the IHSA, 17 other state associations crown boys and girls lacrosse champions.

• The IHSA announced it extended the contract of the girls basketball state tournaments at Illinois State University's Redbird Arena through 2014-15. The girls tourneys have been held there since 1992.