This morning, in New York, a lavish media event put on by the Premier Lacrosse League, a men’s professional lacrosse promotion which reportedly had more than $10 million in venture capital before a ball was shot in anger, announced a women’s lacrosse promotion.
The women’s league is badged the Women’s Lacrosse League. The league will have four teams and play the Sixes style that will be played in the Olympics, and is already being used in Next Collegiate Lacrosse.
And, like NCL, the WLL is going to have its start at the St. James athletic facility in Alexandria, Va. with a two-week-long tournament called the WLL Championship Series. However, very little is known about
If you noticed, everything about the league suggests that the powers-that-be in the PLL consider women’s lacrosse to be something less than the men’s game.
The name of the league, for example, is extremely uninspired. Sure, the name does say what it says on the tin, but it isn’t being given the adjective “Premier.”
There are only four teams in the league, while the PLL for men has twice as many. And the Sixes rosters are likely to be less than half the size of the PLL, which has 25 players per club and plays 10-a-side with modified rules.
Now, we have to give the PLL credit; they were able to get star players like Charlotte North, Izzy Scane, Alex Aust Holman, Ally Mastroanni, and Lizzie Colson to join up.
Given the small start, and the fact that no matches are currently scheduled for the rest of 2025, it does make you wonder if the WLL is going to gain any momentum. I understand that four teams are better than the two which played exhibition lacrosse last year at the St. James, as well better than the one team that traveled to Japan to play a local side.
But given the explosion in the prominence of women’s sports, especially since the end of the global pandemic, it’s befuddling why the PLL, the most prominent men’s professional lacrosse league on the planet, is spending, frankly, pocket change for a group of women who have built an amazing nationwide culture.
Yep, it says here that the PLL needs to do better.