Marquette To Add Division I Lacrosse Teams in 2013

Well, this was a surprise:

Marquette University will add men's and women's lacrosse to its NCAA Division I varsity sports offerings, Athletic Director Steve Cottingham announced Thursday. Both teams will begin competition in spring 2013.

This is the first I've heard of Marquette adding men's and women's lacrosse. Consider me impressed by the University's decision to look to other sports to increase Marquette's sports presence across the country.  Listen, football is never, ever coming back. This is a great idea and I'm very intrigued by this move -- one that only makes Marquette a stronger partner with the Big East.

Don't know a thing about lacrosse, like most of America? Here are some nuggets pulled from Wikipedia:

• The NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship has the highest attendance of any NCAA Championship, outdrawing the Final Four of men's basketball.
• Up until the 1930s, all lacrosse was played on large fields outdoors. The owners of Canadian hockey arenas invented a reduced version of the game, called box lacrosse, as a means to make more profit from their arena investments. In a relatively short period of time, box lacrosse became the dominant form of the sport in Canada, in part due to the severe winter weather that limited outdoor play
• The rules of women's lacrosse differ significantly from men's lacrosse, most notably by equipment and the degree of allowable physical contact.  Women's lacrosse does not promote physical contact primarily because the only protective equipment worn for this sport is a mouth guard and face guard and sometimes thin gloves. Stick checking, and not body checking as in men's lacrosse, is permitted in women's lacrosse.
• The first U.S. intercollegiate game was played on November 22, 1877 between New York University and Manhattan College.
• Syracuse holds the NCAA record of championships with 11, the last occurring in 2009.

The More You Know:
Don Walker from Journal Sentinel has a story.
Read a recap from the University.
Inside Lacrosse is all giddy.
More from Inside Lacrosse.
Lacrosse instructional video: "Get a strong grip on the stick."

Video: Best of Lacrosse: 2010