WOOSTER — When it comes to the connection between the state of Ohio and sports, here’s a quote from an athlete The Buckeye State should know well:
“Lacrosse is probably the best sport I ever played. I could fully express myself in lacrosse.”
– Jim Brown
That’s right, you read that correctly. That quote comes from one of Ohio’s finest — Jim Brown, the former Cleveland Browns great who played for the franchise from 1957-1965 and widely considered the greatest running back in NFL history.
Yep, to many football fans’ surprise, Brown did play lacrosse. Brown starred at Syracuse University where he was so good he became a two-time All-American (1956,1957), inspired a rule change because he held his stick too close to his body to prevent defenders from stripping the ball and was later inducted to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1983.
Didn’t know all that, did you?
But the focus here is centered on Brown’s quote for his fondness of lacrosse.
The key question is, does Ohio feel the same way about lacrosse?
Catching on across the Midwest
Traditionally, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region of the United States has been viewed as the heartland for lacrosse on the high school, college and professional levels for some time now. The sport’s deep-rooted history of finding and developing high-end talent, producing large participation numbers and exuding fervent energy has been implanted in that part of the country for decades, and extends from Connecticut to Massachusetts to New York to Pennsylvania to, especially, Maryland.
Maryland is seen as the ultimate hotbed and most popular U.S. state for lacrosse, which would make sense as it is home to NCAA Division I powerhouses John Hopkins, Towson and the University of Maryland. The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame also calls Sparks, Md., home.
What emerged in the East Coast has finally carried over into the Midwest region, where in recent years there’s been a rapid upswing in growth and interest in the sport, and Ohio has been one of those states, especially on the high school level.
According to USA Lacrosse, there are currently 24 U.S. states that have officially sanctioned lacrosse as a high school varsity sport for both boys and girls — the most recent being Tennessee (2025) and Wisconsin (2024), with Ohio being sanctioned by the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) in 2017.
When it comes to the OHSAA seeing high schools in Ohio increasing their participation numbers in lacrosse over the years, there hasn’t been a quantum leap, but they’ve been steady.
“Since the sport has been sanctioned by the OHSAA in 2017, our numbers look very similar in 2026 compared to 2017,” said Monroe Britton, the OHSAA Lacrosse Administrator. “Both Divisions I and II in boys and girls have continued to hover around the 70-team range.”
A breakdown of the numbers bear that out.
There are just two Divisions in Ohio for lacrosse. For the current OHSAA 2025-26 academic/athletic school year, there are 72 Division I schools and 75 Division II schools that compete in boys lacrosse, making the total 147, as the boys play 10 on 10.
There are 67 Division I schools and 77 Division II schools that compete in girls lacrosse, which comes to 144, with girls playing 12 on 12.
For Wooster High School, the biggest high school in Wayne County, they are the only school that participate in both boys and girls lacrosse (total student enrollment for the 2025-26 academic/athletic year is 932) in the Wayne/Holmes County area.
‘I think it’s booming’
With obvious high school sports like football, basketball, baseball and soccer snatching up all the mainstream attention, one would think there isn’t a place for a niche sport like lacrosse to carve out its own existence across Ohio. But, it’s doing just that.
“I think it’s booming in the state,” said Holly Pope, Wooster High School girls lacrosse head coach for 16 years talking about the interest level increasing over the years at all competitive levels. “Obviously, I see Northeast Ohio more, but I coach a travel team in Columbus called the Columbus Impact. It’s super competitive there and we have kids try out all the time. It’s huge across the state of Ohio and it has grown really, really rapidly.”
“We’ve seen a huge number of new teams enter the state. Every piece of the state is getting new teams,” Wooster High School boys lacrosse five-year head coach Reid Delaney said. “We’ve seen schools in Cincinnati develop quite a bit. Some of the rural schools outside some of the major metropolitan cities are gaining speed.”
Britton says school size doesn’t really play a part in what schools can participate in lacrosse and that “any school can have a team if lacrosse is a popular sport at that school.” Yet, he explains there is a process that has to formulate first.
“For a school to have an OHSAA lacrosse team, the school board of that district would first need to approve that the school will offer and recognize the sport of lacrosse,” Britton explained. “Secondly, they would need to hire a board approved coach, who has obtained the proper credentials for coaching (PAP, background check). They would then need to be sure the OHSAA office is notified that they plan to now offer their student-athletes the opportunity to play lacrosse.
“They would then be put into Division I or Division II based on their student enrollment.”
Luckily for Wooster High School, interest is flourishing as rosters grow bigger and brand new players come out.
“Every year there is always more people interested in watching and playing as well,” Wooster girls junior goalkeeper and captain Maddie McNeil said. “Every year there are like, four to five new people coming to play.”
“Our numbers are always consistently sitting in the mid-to-upper 30s,” said Pope, who played lacrosse at Wooster High School. “The biggest number I’ve ever had tryout was 45 total girls. That was the only year I had to cut because I don’t think that was a sustainable number for me. I think I have six new kids on my high school team.”
Pope credits the youth programs in the Wooster area for the year-to-year increase.
“This year there are at least 13 girls at the eighth/seventh-grade level. At least 13 girls at the sixth/fifth-grade levels. Around a dozen girls at the fourth/third-grade level and probably 10 to a dozen girls playing at kindergarten to second-grade level,” she said. “On the girls side, the youth programs are also booming.”
“For us, this is the largest roster we’ve had in two decades,” Delaney said of his 2026 team, who played four years of lacrosse at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio. “We’re at 38 kids. Back when I started five years ago, we had 24. We’ve typically gotten four to five brand new players every year that have never played before. This year we’ve had nine to 10 brand new players. That’s been a big change for us. The more kids, the merry.”
Delaney attributes that to the recent success of the Wooster boys program, who last season saw the 18-3 Generals make it to the Division II state championship game where they were defeated 9-7 by Bishop Watterson at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus.
“I would say it’s a mixture of success we’ve had and the culture we have,” Delaney said. “We tend to have new kids who want to be a part of the culture. From a success standpoint, we did make it to the state title game last year and the regional finals the year before. Mixing winning with a positive environment creates a good place for these kids to be.”
And you cannot overlook the power of word of mouth when it comes to spreading the word.
“That’s a big thing that Coach Delaney preaches,” said Wooster senior boys goalkeeper Liam Ozar, who played at the Wooster Lacrosse Youth Club for a couple of years before attending Wooster High School. “Just reaching out to players and getting a ton of new people. I’ve got a lot of my friends to come out and play. That’s a big part of our program.”
Seeing growth
Before Wooster boys senior midfielder Brooks Laughlin came to Wooster High School, he had prior lacrosse experience in basically the lacrosse capital of the country.
“I grew up in Maryland and there it’s a hotspot for lacrosse,” he said. “I started playing there when I was pretty young. My coach was a coach at John Hopkins University and they’re very good, so he had a lot of passion for the sport and it helped grow my love for it. Six years ago, I moved here and in seventh grade I started playing here.”
Before he moved to Ohio, Laughlin didn’t know if they played lacrosse in the state.
“It’s definitely growing here in Ohio. When I moved from Maryland, I wondered if it was even a thing out here,” he said. “Just coming over and playing, it’s different, but it’s the same thing at heart.”
Wooster boys senior midfielder Grady Hahn said he didn’t begin playing lacrosse until he moved to the city of Wooster.
“I originally lived in Millersburg and then I moved to California. As soon as I came to Wooster, I stopped playing baseball in middle school,” Hahn said. “I was playing up two grades and I got hit with a pitch. It’s funny because I play in a more contact sport now. My friend (and teammate) Kellen [Smith] told me about lacrosse and he said you should come tryout. I played the last two years in middle school and then I came to high school and said, ‘This is awesome. I’m going to keep on doing it.'”
And the rest is history.
Hahn was a Division II First Team All-Ohio as a junior and has signed to play lacrosse at NCAA Division I Liberty University next season. As of right now, there are three players on the girls team from the Class of 2026 and two players from the Class of 2027 that have made college commitments. For the boys team, there are currently five players that have signed a letter of intent to play lacrosse in college.
For every player like Laughlin, Ozar and McNeil that had experience playing lacrosse since their youth days, you’ll have a player like Hahn who started a little later. But it exhibits exactly the level of pull and visibility lacrosse is having within high schools and throughout the city.
“Especially with the breakout season last year when we made it to the state championship game,” said Hahn, who believes the mental aspect of the game is more important than any skill he’s learned playing lacrosse. “It starts to become the talk of the high school. I think a lot of people are starting to recognize it. You see a sport like football that gets a lot of fans in the stands and when lacrosse season rolls around, it’s not as much. Later in the year when playoff games come around, people start talking about it and coming out.”
“We’re the only school in the county that play lacrosse, so it’s definitely new to the area and a lot of people don’t know about it,” said Laughlin, a Division II All-Ohio Honorable Mention choice last season. “It’s definitely growing and for a lot of my friends this is their first year playing.”
When analyzing if the OHSAA has seen lacrosse expand in any kind of capacity such as ticket sales, attendance, general interest and word of mouth, Britton says not exactly, although the sport is picking up plenty of traction.
“As far as our ticket sales and attendance go, we have not seen a major jump that would indicate a growing interest,” Britton said. “I do believe that lacrosse has certainly gained some popularity, though, based on word of mouth and general interest that we are beginning to see.”
As the interest level in lacrosse rises throughout Ohio, Pope admits she has mixed feelings on it.
She expressed her concerns that the sport is growing “possibly too rapidly” for several reasons, specifically in Northeast Ohio where Wooster resides and a region where the majority of their opponents are located.
“We have a real high turnover of coaches in the Northeast area and most of who we play is from Northeast Ohio. I just don’t always see the game coached or officiated the way it is in Central Ohio. I think because it grew too fast,” Pope said. “Part of that is because we’re getting coaches who are not well-versed in the sport. When I played, we didn’t play with goggles and there were still some unsafe moments back then. When the sport is played correctly, there’s not always the need for all the physicality. Comes back to the sport growing too fast.”
But there’s also another factor.
“Officials is another thing. It’s hard to find officials,” Pope continued. “There’s also a lot of college programs, so I think it’s growing on the youth, high school and college level. There are so many schools across Northeast Ohio that have lacrosse programs now. We have over 70 high school girls teams in Northeast Ohio. Our closest opponent is probably Wadsworth or Medina Highland. It grew a little bit faster than what we could accommodate.
“I love the sport and am happy it’s growing, but I just want to make sure it’s growing while we preserve the integrity of it.”
With the popularity soaring, Britton even thinks that more schools will add lacrosse as a varsity sport in the coming years.
“I would personally anticipate that more schools begin to add lacrosse in the next 5-10 years,” Britton said. “I think the popularity of the sport is beginning to grow on a national scale with the Professional Lacrosse League (PLL) getting more screen time and the addition of lacrosse to the 2028 Olympic Games. I believe additions to the sport like that on a national scale will only help generate interest in the coming years from student-athletes.”
Is the OHSAA adding a third division a possibility?
“For a third division, we would need to see a strong increase in schools not only offering the sport, but also participating in the OHSAA postseason tournament,” Britton said.
Pope and Delaney even envision more U.S. states sanctioning lacrosse as a high school sport as it spreads across America.
“I think it will,” said Delaney, who’s Generals are off to a 2-3 start this season. “The pro lacrosse game has grown tremendously in the last 4-5 years. I think we’re seeing from a natural perspective more people seeing the sport for the first time and wanting to play and being involved. All the states are interconnected with social media and everything. It’s kind of exploded. I do see other states adapting it as a sanctioned sport.”
“It started in the East for sure. New York and up in New England is growing. Now it’s coming into the Midwest. Chicago is a huge hotbed,” said Pope, who’s varsity team is currently 1-3 this season. “I was just watching a college game the other night and they kept talking about Montana and Minnesota, which I thought was really interesting. There’s an event called American Select. Essentially you have a tryout for your state and then your state goes and plays other states. I coached the Ohio team for that, so it was really cool to see teams from Texas, Southern California, Northern California. There were a ton of states that were represented and I would imagine that number will continue to rise.”
If the coaches can see it, then the players see the growth in lacrosse, as well. Not just through Ohio, but also in Northeast Ohio, where there is a a full-octane presence of lacrosse fever.
“My dad used to play lacrosse and he used to tell me that the girls lacrosse teams used to be clubs, but now it’s evolved to an actual high school sport,” said McNeil, who has interest in playing lacrosse at the college level.
And all that current hype for the sport? It can only continue to grow — across the state of Ohio and beyond.
“When I was young, I wouldn’t say it was quite as popular as it is today, especially with the professional league being open,” said Ozar, who was last season’s Division II Goalkeeper of the Year. “I’ve seen a huge spike in Northeast Ohio and Cleveland, which has grown so much in the last couple of years. There are a huge amount of powerhouses in that area in Western Reserve Academy, St Ignatius and other Division I schools, as well as Division II schools.
“I think it will keep growing because it is a sport people are excited about watching and playing.”
jamessimpson@gannett.com
Twitter/X: @JamesSimpsonII
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Just how much has lacrosse grown at the high school level in Ohio?
Reporting by James Simpson II, Wooster Daily Record / The Daily Record
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