The current World Lacrosse U20 championship, being held in Hong Kong this week, has seen a number of absolute blowout scores.
You could argue, especially for the defending champion Americans, that the first three results — a 33-0 win over Germany, a 28-4 win over Puerto Rico, and a 29-1 win over China — are a reflection of the team’s past successes as well as the search for excellence on the part of head coach Kelly Amonte-Hiller.
But it’s not just the States which have inflicted some heavy results in this tournament. Canada had a 19-0 win over Wales and a surprising 22-4 win over the Haudenosaunee. Australia took down New Zealand 18-6 and beat Scotland 19-7. And England beat Jamaica 30-3 and Hong Kong 18-1.
What’s going on here?
Well, the structure of this tournament is different from the layered nature of the senior women’s tournament, which was held in 2022 in Towson, Md. In the senior tournament, the five highest-ranked sides — the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and Scotland — played each other in the first round, each knowing that they would make the bracket for the Championship Division.
In the U20s, there are four pools of five teams, with only the two top teams in each pool making the knockout round. In other words, you won’t see games with more than one elite side in this tournament until the knockout rounds begin later this week.
While this is great for some of the developing lacrosse nations to have competitive games between them, it has led to some very non-competitive games thus far. In a game which is struggling to show that it is not going to be a North American runaway come the 2028 Olympics, this isn’t the best look.