A few months ago L and I decided to go to a professional box lacrosse game downtown Rochester. It was a great learning experience for me and a lot of fun too.

After enjoying our groupon for the box lacrosse game we decided to get tickets to a professional field lacrosse game in order to see the differences and find out which we enjoy better.

When I bought the tickets I thought through the summer time and decided the end of June would be sunny enough to enjoy an outdoor sport. Well, not this summer.

After checking the weather, the stadium website, and the Major Leauge Lacrosse website, nothing was canceled. So we packed warm clothes and rain coats and headed to Brockport, a neighborhood west of Rochester.

When we got to the state university college campus it was overcast but not raining. We walked over to the stadium just at the national anthem finished and got our tickets.

With how cold it was we opted for supporting the local team by buying two cups of coffee then settled into our seats. The Rochester Rattlers and Ohio Machines were playing on the college football field. L said it felt like being in High School again. Shortly after the game started it began to sprinkle fortunately it only lasted for a short time

Watching the game we noticed several differences from our box lacrosse experience.  The teams had more players on the field at one time and of course the field was longer. Because of this similar to soccer some players played defense and some offense. The goalies were in less padding and gear but had larger nets. Also in general this version was less aggressive, less offense attaching and more running and passing.

We were grateful that the ball was a bright orange because it would have been hard to see otherwise. L said he missed the big screen to capture the moments closer and to get play-backs of what happened.

Also unlike the box lacrosse this game was much slower paced partly because the  the game was televised on an ESPN channel the game was stalled often by commercials after time outs. During time outs the announcers went through a short list of advertisements, the same ones, each time.

No one seemed to have their full attention on the game.  The audience was mostly families with young boys who had played a lacrosse game on the same field before the professional game got started. The local cheer/dance group for the local team were very unprepared and unprofessional..

Overall we are glad we went. It was good to see the differences and to learn that it is obvious the box lacrosse is much more popular around here.