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A future Olympic sport in Lake Placid?

The Colorado Baby Buffs play against the Baby Blue in a game at the North Elba Athletic Fields on Monday in Lake Placid. The U.S. national team demonstration will take place at these fields. (Enterprise photo — Parker O’Brien)

LAKE PLACID — A faster version of lacrosse will be showcased in Lake Placid tonight.

The Lake Placid Summit Classic lacrosse tournament is hosting a World Lacrosse Sixes demonstration with members of both the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, respectively, at the North Elba Athletic Fields on Tuesday night.

Sixes is a new discipline, or an event within the sport of lacrosse, that showcases a faster paced lacrosse game. It’s played on a smaller field, with fewer players, a condensed game length and a 30-second shot clock, according to Lake Placid Summit Lacrosse.

“When you watch the game it’s kind of infectious. It’s very fast, a lot of the same things with skill and speed are there and it is played in 30 minutes versus an hour-and-a-half,” Lake Placid Summit Classic co-founder George Leveille said. “The idea is to make it a much quicker.”

The World Lacrosse Sixes aims to bring back lacrosse as an official Olympic sport for the first time since 1908. Lacrosse was a sport in the 1948 Olympics, but it was a demonstration sport — a sport that is played to promote the sport, not an official Olympic sport.

Leveille said there has been a movement for the last 15 to 20 years to get lacrosse back in the Olympics. The sport has now grown, with around 30 to 40 countries participating in the upcoming World Games.

The U.S. national teams that will be showcasing the new form of lacrosse in Lake Placid will be participating in the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama.

Leveille is hopeful that the new version of lacrosse will make it into the Summer Olympics in 2028, which will be held in Los Angeles.

“The Olympics are very challenging in terms of getting in, because of things like cost and things of that nature,” Leveille said. “So they have encouraged the sport to modify the way the game is played to be more accessible to more countries.”

The first step in the process of becoming an Olympic sport is recognition as a sport by the International Olympic Committee, according to Brittanica, an online encyclopedia. Once a sport is recognized, it can move to earn status from the International Sports Federation. Lastly, a sport must be formally admitted into the Olympics as a sport by the IOC.

“The form of game they are using for the Olympic is also a form that can be used for learning the sport. That is a very important connection,” Leveille said. “We are teaching young people especially in communities that aren’t served, inner cities and places like that, to play on a small field with smaller players.”

Leveille said the demonstration is one of the first examples of this sport being played publicly in anticipation of being in the 2028 Olympics games in Los Angeles.

The demonstration will be the second of three events for the U.S. National Sixes discipline teams. A third event, featuring international competition, is planned for October at USA Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, Maryland, according to Summit Lacrosse Society.

With the ongoing Lake Placid Summit Lacrosse tournament, Leveille expects to have a good crowd, as many of the participants of the tournament will likely stick around.

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