How to Watch Lacrosse: Games, Films and Where to Find Them

A kid who watches this sport plays it differently. The problem is that lacrosse is genuinely one of the hardest sports in America to find on a television.

Every other sport has one home. Football is on Sunday. Basketball is on TNT. Lacrosse is scattered across four streaming services, two leagues that run in opposite seasons, and a YouTube archive that nobody has ever organized.

This page fixes that.

1. Why watching is training

Film is practice when it has a job attached. A kid watching the ball learns nothing. A kid watching one player, one position, one situation learns something every possession.

Tell them what to watch before you turn it on. “Watch the defenseman’s feet.” “Watch where the goalie is standing before the shot.” “Count how many passes before they score.” That is the difference between entertainment and training, and it costs nothing.

Two things make the first few games easier on you as well as on them. Knowing what each position is trying to do turns the pattern on the screen into something readable, and the glossary covers the words the broadcast will use without explaining — slide, ride, clear, man-up. If it is the whistles rather than the words that lose you, the rules page is written for exactly that.

2. The year, season by season

The single most confusing thing about following lacrosse is that there is always some on, but never in the same place twice.

3. Professional — outdoor

The Premier Lacrosse League is the outdoor pro league and it runs in summer. Every game is on ESPN+, with select games on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.

• premierlacrosseleague.com
• The PLL YouTube channel — highlights, full-length features, and behind-the-scenes series

The PLL is the easiest entry point for a new family. The broadcast is well produced, the rules are explained on air, and the season lines up with summer when nothing else is happening.

4. Professional — indoor

The National Lacrosse League plays box lacrosse indoors, winter into spring. It does not compete with the PLL calendar, which means between the two leagues there is professional lacrosse on for most of the year.

• nll.com · watch live · YouTube
• League history

If your kid has only ever seen field lacrosse, show them a box game. Five runners, boards, a 30-second shot clock and legal cross-checking. It is a different sport and it is the reason Canadian players arrive with better hands than everyone else.

5. College

The NCAA regular season runs February through May, and Championship Weekend lands on Memorial Day weekend. That weekend is the best three days of lacrosse all year and it is worth planning around. If you want to know which jerseys keep turning up in the final, the blue bloods explains why.

• NCAA Division I men’s · USILA for every division
• Inside Lacrosse scores
• MCLA — college club lacrosse, where nearly all Texas college lacrosse is played. Their channel carries games.

6. High school and youth — the answer nobody publishes

This is the question I get most from parents, and the answer is not obvious.

MaxPreps carries THSLL scores and schedules and links out to NFHS Network for the video. MaxPreps Texas boys · girls.

After the fact: THSLL posts video archives of past state championship weekends on its own site, and GameOn Sports Network hosts recorded THSLL championship games on demand. Neither is live — both are how you find a game you missed.

7. The documentaries

Start with the first two. Both are free and both are better than most sports documentaries that get theatrical releases.

• The Medicine Game — the Thompson brothers of the Onondaga Nation. Watch this one first. It is about lacrosse the way a film about a family is about a family.
• George Boiardi — the Cornell captain who died on the field in 2004. The hardest thing on this list and the one people remember.
• The Red Bandanna — Welles Crowther, the Boston College lacrosse player who saved at least a dozen people in the South Tower on September 11 and did not come home. Widely available; ESPN has aired it.
• The Lost Trophy — the Haudenosaunee and the game they created
• The Chronicles of Syracuse — six parts
• Mikey Powell’s story · Roots of Lacrosse
• Brotherhood: McDonogh 2023 — one high school season, start to finish
• Northwestern women’s · Tufts 2010 · New Blue: Hopkins 2014
• The Blueprint · Weathering the Storm — professional seasons from the inside

8. The classic games

These are the ones to show a kid who says lacrosse is boring.

• Yale vs. Penn, 2019 quarterfinal — widely argued to be the greatest game ever played. Every game from that quarterfinal weekend is worth finding.
• The 2021 Division I championship — the best final of the modern era
• The 2022 women’s D1 championship
• The Gait era at Syracuse — 1989 and 1990. Show a kid what Gary Gait did and watch their face — he is one of the figures who changed the sport.
• Canada vs. the Haudenosaunee, indoor — the two best box nations on earth
• Deep archives: Team Zebra · NCAA Championships

9. Staying current

• USA Lacrosse Magazine — the best single source, and the TV schedule lives here
• Inside Lacrosse · Lacrosse All Stars
• Worth subscribing on YouTube: Lacrosse Film Room for tactics, The Lax Network and Lax Weekly for news

10. Make it a family thing

Put a game on with no agenda. Not as homework, not as film study. Just on.

Some of the best players I have coached became lacrosse players on a couch before they were ever any good on a field. They saw somebody do something they had never imagined and decided they wanted to try it. That moment is free and it is available on YouTube tonight.

A kid who watches this sport plays it differently. It really is that simple.