To the Editor:

Lacrosse is a sport I just recently became aware of, before last year I honestly did not know anything about it. My child came home from school asking to join the team. I was thrilled!

I did the typical internet search to become more familiar with this sport. I was pleased to discover that it's a Native American sport that originated in the northern United States. This sport was literally played in this area originally called "stick ball" by the Algonquin tribe from this valley. It then spread to Canada and Scotland.

Learning all of these facts made me proud that my child wanted to participate in this sport. This was until she got her uniform. To my dismay the lacrosse team had to wear skirts. I was confused by this so I made a few calls. It seems that many people are under the impression that lacrosse is a Scottish sport and wearing these skirts or kilts as they call them is a tradition to respect the sports history.

However, men don't wear kilts not even in Scotland while playing the sport. I looked further into the regulations on the uniform code and it states that girls can wear shorts, pants or kilts as long as they are all uniform. In short our schools are choosing to have girls wear skirts instead of shorts or pants like boys. Not only are the skirts an issue, but girls are not allowed to wear helmets, a clear safety issue.

It costs more to participate in lacrosse than any other sport offered at this particular school. Not only cleats, sticks and balls but they are not provided a full uniform. The skirt does not serve as appropriate uniform. That was clearly addressed to parents at a meeting. Parents have to provide black shorts to wear under the skirt as to not be inappropriate. If they did not have them under the skirt they would not be allowed to play. Parents also had to provide pants for cold weather and game socks.

The big picture I'm trying to show is what are we teaching our girls? There is a big push not to sexualize our daughters and to be equal to men in all we do. Female athletes are not taken seriously if they are not treated equally. This includes uniforms, rules, regulations and wages. It really saddens me that this small upstate area produces so many quality athletes all the way up to the professional level yet we ignore this issue that we can change. We can change this sexist "tradition".

The equality starts here. How amazing it would be for little upstate NY to be one of the first to start this change and show our girls that they can be more than just a skirt. If it originated from here we can be original!

Amber Williams

Lisbon