25,000 PLAYERS LOST?

LACROSSE CANADA HAS JUST LOST 25,000 PLAYERS…

If this wasn’t so serious it would be deliriously funny. But it’s not funny at all. It’s about OUR national governing body publicly screwing around with its registration numbers and mostly sabotaging its credibility. Let’s have a look but before let’s make sure we all understand one important thing.

Everyone in lacrosse wants Lacrosse Canada to be successful; no one wishes anything bad or negative. We just all want Lacrosse Canada to tell the truth and be transparent with issues and matters that concern the members and the lacrosse community.

One of those issues is the official number of registered members. It’s not a very complicated matter. Just identify criteria for membership, count heads and collect membership fees.

Lacrosse Canada seems to do this at annual meetings in order to discretely establish the voting structure and the number of votes per province according to the registered number of provincial members. In 2024 the official number of registered participants was 51,131.

Now for the past years Lacrosse Canada has been peddling 85,000 as the number of participants ‘’represented’’ by the provincial associations. That information was shared on every post on the national website (About Lacrosse Canada) and issued to the members, the paying members, the volunteers, the sponsors, the financial partners and to Sport Canada, the national funding agency who financially supports national associations partly according to the number of registered participants.

Lacrosse Canada, on its own website, informs its members that ‘’the number of registered participants is a big factor in the amount of federal funding that Lacrosse Canada receives from Sport Canada’’. Reporting nearly 85,000 participants is one way to try to obtain better funding especially when the real and verified number is 51,131.

Now, this past week Lacrosse Canada, without any form of explanation, came out with a surprising change concerning the information pertaining to national registration. As of February 12th 2025, after every post on its website Lacrosse Canada now admits that the number of participants is ‘’nearly 60,000’’. A drop of 25,000 participants. Just 25,000 out of 85,000!

Not content to issue that information on February 12th Lacrosse Canada, in its wisdom, changed the numbers for its posts dating back to October 22^nd 2024. Those who read the October 22^nd post at that time saw 85,000 as the official number of participants. If they go to the website today and locate the October 22^nd post, they will learn that the number of participants was of 60,000. That’s called playing with the books. Retroactively dressing up the issue. In plain terms, screwing around.

But if you really want to laugh, consider that the posts on the French website still today indicate 85,000 participants. Someone forgot to screw around with the French website.

We’re talking about OUR national governing body; the body in charge of OUR game nationally who can’t even come up with a clear and honest number of its registered participants and who has misled the members, the funding partners, the sponsors and just about everyone with numbers who have no relationship whatsoever with the truth. 85,000 is a sham; and 60,000 is not even an accurate figure either.

Serious governing bodies, when dealing with registration numbers, add the number of paid registered participants and come up with an accurate number. Not ‘’nearly’’ 60,000. No! An accurate number, an easily collected number and a real number. Associations don’t represent ‘’nearly’’ of ‘’just under’’ a certain number of members; they represent the paid registered members. No one else.

Lacrosse Canada is not serious when time comes to report the number of its real and registered participants. Who will trust Lacrosse Canada when it tells us that the game is growing but that the membership has gone from 85,000 to 60,000?

Which sponsors will want to be associated with a national governing body who appears to mislead everyone in this area?

Which members will now naively trust Lacrosse Canada’s political, technical and financial reports.

Lacrosse Canada itself begs not to be trusted and the recent change in the number of participants does not decrease the impression that questions need to be asked and reports need to be challenged.

This is not a marginal matter. This concerns OUR national governing body’s ability to tell the truth and to be transparent about it. Not to mislead with false numbers in order to look good and to collect more money from partners and funding agencies.

In 2024 there were 51,131 officially registered participants as discretely reported to the provincial associations at (and only at) the annual meeting. To that number needs to be added the number of coaches and officials who are paying registered participants. That number appears nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Even the total number of participants appears nowhere. Everyone is in the dark.

No one has an accurate figure for the number of registered participants to Lacrosse Canada. Why the secrecy? Why the misleading information? Why such complications for such an obvious matter.

Go to Pickleball Canada’s website (www.pickleballcanada.org) and look at how a really growing sport publicly and openly addresses the issue of its registration and growth. Anyone connected with lacrosse will be ashamed with Lacrosse Canada’s reporting system compared with Pickleball’s.