Lacrosse has been played in Pennsylvania since the 19th century. The state has amateur programs at the club, college, and high school level, and several past and present professional teams in the National Lacrosse League (NLL) and Major League Lacrosse (MLL).

College lacrosse in Pennsylvania

History 19th century The first lacrosse team in North America was the Montreal Lacrosse Club, established in Montreal, by dentist, William George Beers. In 1834, a demonstration of lacrosse was given by the Caughnawaga Indians in Montreal, which resulted in growing interest by Canadian settlers. By the 1850s, Beers codified the game by adding rules and structure. Beers also petitioned for lacrosse to be named Canada's national sport, which led to the formation of the National Lacrosse Association. Montreal Lacrosse Club created the first set of written rules of the game of lacrosse. In 1860, Beers wrote up the codes, rules of the game, reducing the length of games and limiting the number of players to 12 per side. In 1867, the first game played under these new rules was played at Upper Canada College in Toronto, where Upper Canada lost to the Toronto Cricket Club 3–1.

Intercollegiate lacrosse in the United States can trace its roots to 1877, when New York University beat Manhattan College two to zero. Also in 1877, the Boston Lacrosse Club started at Harvard University, and the Harvard lacrosse team was established three years later, in 1880.

In 1879, the United States Amateur Lacrosse Association was formed by John R. Flannery, a Canadian club player, to coordinate the efforts of private, amateur lacrosse clubs in several cities in the Northeastern United States, including a club that formed in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Flannery grew up in Canada, where he was a member of the Montreal Shamrocks Lacrosse Club, and subsequently moved to the United States where he played for a number of amateur east coast clubs. In 1878, he organized a game billed as the National Championship between Union Lacrosse Club and Ravenswood Lacrosse Club of New York City. Encouraged by the turnout of some 40,000 spectators, Flannery set about organizing the disparate lacrosse clubs into a cohesive organization. Ravenswood Lacrosse Club with John Flannery went on to influence lacrosse at several other colleges, playing a well-publicized game against New York University in 1879.

In 1881, the first true varsity level intercollegiate lacrosse tournament was held, with Harvard defeating Princeton University in the final, 3–0. This series led to the formation of a league in 1882, known as the Inter-Collegiate Lacrosse Association (the ICLA, later the ILA), which included New York University, Columbia University, Princeton, and Harvard. At the same time, Flannery's United States Amateur Lacrosse Association comprised eleven college and club teams, but by 1886 the number of clubs had risen to greater than 40. College organizations, including a varsity team at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, soon sought admittance to the ILA. Lehigh fielded its first varsity squad in 1885, with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and Lafayette College in Easton, at the club level, following suit in 1890. Lehigh and Swarthmore were accepted as members in the ILA in 1888 and 1891, respectively.

The first tournament for lacrosse supremacy during this period was known as the Oelrichs Cup, sponsored by Hermann Oelrichs, and first offered up in a tournament format in 1881. Oelrichs was the first president of the United States National Amateur Lacrosse Association, a precursor to the USILA, and he was a member of the New York Lacrosse Club. The Oelrichs Cup was played for much of the 1880s, played mostly by amateur non-scholastic clubs though Princeton did field a tournament team. Arnold K. Reese as part of a powerful Baltimore lacrosse club, won the Oelrichs Cup in 1890. At the same time, Reese had been the main force behind starting up varsity lacrosse at Lehigh University. Reese's efforts led to Lehigh being one of the early college lacrosse powers. Reese played for Lehigh from 1888 to 1891, winning an ILA title in 1890.

In 1898, another league, the Inter-University Lacrosse League (IULL) was formed playing with slightly different rules, with Harvard, Columbia and Cornell as charter members. Many of the member teams of both the ILA and IULL joined, dropped out or rejoined at various times over the years. In December 1905, representatives from all the colleges in the two leagues met in New York and formed the United States Inter-Collegiate Lacrosse League, the USICLL initially, soon to be known as the USILL. The colleges entering into this association were Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Lehigh, Pennsylvania, Stevens, and Swarthmore. The USILL acted as the governing body for lacrosse in the United States until it was replaced by the USILA in 1926.

During the first 40 years of organized varsity college lacrosse, known alternately as the ICLA, ILA, USICLL, USILL and USILA, two Pennsylvania schools, Lehigh and Swarthmore, fielded dominant teams. The two teams were voted National Champions of college lacrosse a combined fourteen (14) seasons. Glenn "Pop" Warner, the Hall of Fame football coach at the Carlisle Indian School (PA) from 1899 to 1903, substituted lacrosse for baseball during the spring season because he said, "Lacrosse is a developer of health and strength. It is a game that spectators rave over once they understand it." It is also likely that lacrosse, a contact sport, helped prepare his football players for the fall season. By 1920, the USILL had expanded to include teams from Syracuse, Rutgers, Penn State and, encouraged by Pop Warner, even considered adding a varsity team at the University of Pittsburgh.

20th century In 1920, college lacrosse realigned their association, adding a Southern Division, which included powerful teams from Lehigh, Penn, and Swarthmore along with traditional power Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA), the organization still in existence today, officially was formed in November 1925.

As of 1942, the association had only 23 member colleges at that time. The members of the U.S. Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association for the 1942 season were: City College of New York, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Drexel Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Hobart College, Johns Hopkins University, Lafayette College, Loyola College, University of Maryland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Penn State College, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Swarthmore College, Syracuse University, Union College, United States Military Academy, United States Naval Academy and Yale University.

Lehigh fielded its first varsity squad in 1885, with the University of Pennsylvania and Lafayette College at the club level following suit in 1890. Penn played intermittently upon starting up lacrosse and so lists 1900 as their first official season of varsity lacrosse. Penn State played its first intercollegiate game against Penn in 1913. In 1917, Lehigh which had gone undefeated for two straight seasons and had won the Southern division that season, won the USILL championship by defeating Penn in overtime 5 to 4 at Franklin Field in a title matchup. Lehigh had beaten Cornell, the Northern division champions, the prior season to capture a share of the USILL national lacrosse title.

Swarthmore won four national titles in the early years of lacrosse. Baltimore Hall of Famer, Philip E. Lamb, led Swarthmore to consecutive titles in 1904 and 1905, "in the days when Swarthmore and Johns Hopkins were the perennial national champs", according to Lamb's Hall of Fame entry. Also, in 1940 Penn State attempted a college box lacrosse league playing top universities including Yale. An appropriately named College Division dominated lacrosse in the early 1950s, consisting of some 20 undergraduate schools from Rensselaer Polytechnic, Army, Virginia, Navy, Hofstra, Yale, Baltimore University, Maryland, Delaware, Drexel, Princeton, Duke, Washington College, Washington and Lee, Johns Hopkins, Loyola, and Western Maryland as well as two club teams from Mount Washington and Maryland Lacrosse Club. Drexel represented Pennsylvania schools well in 1952 reaching as high as number six in the standings. In the latter part of the 1950s with some 60 colleges playing lacrosse, schools were divided into three divisions. While the 'A Division' included traditional national powers Navy and Johns Hopkins, the 'B Division' and 'C Division' consisted of several potent Pennsylvania universities including Penn, Swarthmore, Penn State, Lehigh, Dickinson, Drexel, and Lafayette.

1954 College Division Final National Rankings

1954 College Division -- Final National Rankings (National Champions in Blue bold) (Pennsylvania schools in italics)

A Division (Cyrus Miller Division) Navy Army Duke Maryland Princeton Johns Hopkins Virginia Yale Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

B Division (Laurie Cox Division) Syracuse Washington College Hofstra Harvard University of Pennsylvania Rutgers Cornell Baltimore Swarthmore College Loyola Hobart Dartmouth Pennsylvania State University Williams University of Delaware

C Division (Roy Taylor Division) Union New Hampshire Stevens Tech Amherst Lehigh University Oberlin MIT Adelphi CCNY Cortland State Tufts Hamilton Dickinson College Lafayette College Worcester Poly

Lehigh University has won eleven national titles under various pre-NCAA United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association formats for national championships, while Swarthmore University has won five titles.

More recently under the NCAA tournament format in place since 1971, Pennsylvania based universities have participated in many NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship tournaments including Bucknell (2), Cabrini (16), Drexel (1), Franklin & Marshall (5), Gettysburg (25), Lehigh (2), Kutztown (1), Messiah College (2), Penn (12), Penn State (4), Swarthmore (1), Widener (6) and Villanova (2).

In the 1988 NCAA tournament, Penn led by Tony Seaman and Chris Flynn were the first Pennsylvania school to reach the semi-finals, losing by one goal to the Gait Brothers led Syracuse Orange, which is as far as any Pennsylvania based Division I school has advanced in tournament play. In all, Penn reached the NCAAs six times in the 1980s, including a quarterfinal appearance in 1987.

21st century

For the first time in 2011, a Pennsylvania university or college won the NCAA Division II National Title when Mercyhurst defeated Adelphi 9 to 8. Mercyhurst also played in the 2007 Division II national finals, losing a close contest to LeMoyne 6 to 5. Mercyhurst has been to three Division II finals.

Among recent highlights at the university level, the Penn State Nittany Lions men's team in 2019 was 16 and 2, was seeded number one in the 2019 NCAA tournament, becoming the first ever Pennsylvania team to get the number one NCAA seeding in Men's lacrosse and the second Pennsylvania team to make men's lacrosse Division I Final Four. Also in 2019. Grant Ament set the Division I single season record for assists in a season with 95 assists. In 2005, Penn State was named to the NCAA tournament after reaching number eleven in the national rankings. In 2006 Penn upset #3 Cornell on their way to getting an at-large berth in the NCAA tournament.