I love the sport of lacrosse and both of my kids played at the elite level in club and HS and one is still playing D1. The WAPO article, and many of the responses here and on WAPO, are all bull. For the longest time, lacrosse was a only a prep school sport. It has been great to see its popularity grow and to see it spread like it has over the last 20-25 years. However, its growth will be capped, to some extent, by the fact that it is an expensive sport with regard to equipment, field use, transportation, etc. and in the south, deep south and southwest, competes with baseball and softball. Public school AD's simply don't have the budget space to add a sport as expensive as lacrosse. For that reason alone, it will continue to be predominantly regional public and private school sport.

Both of my children played with black players growing up and several of my daughters black teammates are now on, or will be on very good college teams. Like any sport, if you can play, you can play. With regard to the parents of the player in the article, good coaches will tell their players that barring serious injury, they do not want to hear from the parents except at pre and post game meet and greets. There is no surer way to get your child a one way ticket to the bench than to try to discuss playing time, positioning, strategy... with the coach(es). They don't come to your workplace to tell you how to do your jib. Also, I have seen it happen more than once where notoriously PITA parents have significantly harmed their child's recruiting process.

With regard to the socioeconomic elements the bleeding heart WAPO injected into the article, I would love to own and race thoroughbred horses, or maybe a Formula 1 Team, I don't because I can't afford it.