What’s Our Mission?

 What’s Our Mission?  By Dennis Kehoe

If you leaf through the constitution of almost any lacrosse organization in Canada—local, provincial, or national—you’ll find a sentence under “Mission Statement” that has now survived longer than some countries. The Mission statement typically reads as some variation of: “To foster and promote lacrosse as the National Game of Canada.”

That sentence has been with us since September 26, 1867, when the National Lacrosse Association was formed in Kingston, Ontario. One hundred and fifty-nine years is a long time to repeat anything without revisiting whether it’s still relevant, and what it actually means.  The problem with old mission statements is that they fossilize. They turn into slogans that no one interrogates, even when the world around them changes completely.

So it is worth asking the awkward question: if lacrosse is already the National Summer Sport of Canada, shouldn’t we “check the box” and move on to more relevant goals and objectives?  To answer that, you have to rewind history a bit—and deal with the myth.

For generations, Canadians were told that when the country was formed in 1867, lacrosse was recognized as the national sport. But, in spite of our smug satisfaction as lacrossers, it turns out that this was not true. (With all due respect, a sincere thank you George Beers. We’d have been lost without this.) The persistent myth was useful. If you are not officially the national sport, then baking it in as your mission—to ensure the importance of your favourite game and lock in its status—makes perfect sense.

Fast forward a hundred years to 1965 – the myth was discovered and hockey briefly threatened to displace lacrosse. The issue re-emerged in 1994.   This time legislatively, lacrosse finally and officially secured its place as the Official National (Summer) Sport by Act of Parliament.

Mission accomplished.

A few months later, Sport Canada cut funding to the Canadian Lacrosse Association.

So much for securing our status and future.

After sustained lobbying by the CLA executive and the broader lacrosse community, funding was restored—though at levels that could only be described as symbolic when compared to Olympic sports with fewer participants and far less cultural depth. But that is another story.

Still, by 1994, the original mission had technically been fulfilled. Which raises the more puzzling question: if that mission remains unchanged thirty years later, what does it actually mean now?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a country deciding on a national sport for the first time. What would you expect of it?

Broadly speaking, definitions—formal and informal—tend to converge around three criteria:

1. A physical activity that is culturally significant or deeply embedded in the nation. Lacrosse in Canada: check.

2. A national symbol, intrinsic to the country’s identity and culture. At one time, unquestionably yes.

3. As Wikipedia puts it: “An unofficial national sport is an activity that holds significant popularity or cultural and historical significance within a particular nation but lacks legal recognition as the official national sport. These informal national sports typically reflect a nation's preferences, attention and their perceived connection to the nation's culture and identity.”

Popularity matters.

And this is where lacrosse now finds itself on contested ground.

Before the First World War, lacrosse had a compelling case on all counts. Today, less so. In 2024, reported lacrosse registration in Canada stood at approximately 51,000 players.

By comparison, a March 8, 2023 Toronto Star article reported roughly 85,000 girls playing organized soccer in Canada. One gender, one sport, exceeded the entire lacrosse playing population by 67 percent. In 2022, Soccer Canada reported nearly 690,000 total registrations—more than hockey.

Soccer is not a national sport by Act of Parliament, but it clearly satisfies the popularity test.

Hockey, meanwhile, meets all three criteria effortlessly. Though younger than lacrosse, it is deeply embedded, culturally dominant, symbolic, and widely (wildly?) popular in both participation and public attention.

Which leads to an uncomfortable implication. When lacrosse organizations say their mission is to “promote lacrosse as the National sport of Canada,” what are they actually asserting? That lacrosse should be the most popular? The most culturally central? That it should occupy the mental real estate Canadians reserve for hockey?

And if that is the goal, what are we doing—structurally, financially, strategically—to get there?

This is where the mission statement starts to look less like a goal and more like a ritual incantation.

The issue is not effort. Thousands of volunteers sustain lacrosse across the country. At the minor, club, high school, university, major, and national levels, they donate professional-grade skills and staggering amounts of time. Parents, non-parents, and ex-parents alike sacrifice (or at least jeopardize) careers, health, social lives, and relationships to keep the game functioning. If you stop to look closely, the cumulative human investment is extraordinary.

But incentives matter.

If you volunteer because your child needs a coach, a manager, a registrar, or a treasurer, your goal is simple: make your immediate environment run better. If your local association grows, improves its house league, or fields more competitive teams, that is a positive spillover—gratifying, but still local.

Here is the reality check: what incentive does that volunteer have to grow lacrosse on the other side of a large city, or in a different town, or in another province altogether?

Most volunteers are already operating at capacity. They are raising families, caring for elders, managing households, and navigating increasingly difficult economic conditions. Burnout is common. Expecting them to carry a national growth mandate is not just unrealistic—it is unfair.

If the mission is truly to grow the popularity of lacrosse to the point where it is universally perceived as the national sport, then a volunteer-only model is structurally incapable of delivering that outcome.

Consider the workforce. There are, at most, about forty paid lacrosse positions in Canada not associated with NLL teams. Most sit at the provincial governing-body level, a few at Lacrosse Canada, and a handful elsewhere earning hourly wages rather than honoraria. Their work is overwhelmingly administrative—essential, yes, but not transformative.

Administration maintains the system. It does not expand it.

So where are the “grow-the-game” resources?

If lacrosse is to become more than a quaint fringe sport to the non-lacrosse public, leaders must stop treating the mission statement as decorative text and start treating it as an operational directive.

That likely means reallocating resources. It means using some of the funds(finally) flowing upward from grassroots members to the National Governing Body—to seed new and long-dormant regions. It means investing in personnel and infrastructure in under-represented areas such as Quebec, Northern Ontario, and the Maritimes, where volunteers have done heroic work but cannot carry the load indefinitely.

Imagine, briefly, what lacrosse looked like in Quebec before the First World War. Now imagine coast-to-coast-to-coast participation that includes not only traditional communities but newer Canadians as well. Canada’s population exceeds 40 million. Despite its geographic sprawl, the diversity of formats, and competitive levels in lacrosse presents growth opportunities we have never fully exploited.

Stronger participation numbers would not just justify the label “National Summer Sport.” They would give it substance. They could produce the organic groundswell of popularity that the mission statement has promised since 1867 but never operationalized.

It is time to stop treating the mission as window-dressing.

If growing the game is truly the goal, then growing the game must finally become the mission.

Dennis Kehoe is a Historian with the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame, a former Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Lacrosse Association, member of the Toronto Beaches Board of Directors, and early builder of the Ontario (now Canadian) University Field Lacrosse Association