The highest level of professional men’s lacrosse announced a women’s league Wednesday, significantly opening up pathways for athletes to continue playing the sport after college.
The Premier Lacrosse League is launching the Women’s Lacrosse League to begin next year with four teams in yet-to-be-announced cities. PLL hosted its first women’s lacrosse event in the U.S. in February, after hosting exhibitions in Japan in the last few years.
The league will begin with a two-week tournament called the Championship Series, which already exists with the men’s league. The WLL won’t immediately launch a several-month-long summer season like the men also have, but PLL president Paul Rabil tells Front Office Sports he still has lofty dreams for expansion.
“It could look like we have multiple Championship Series and you have major tournaments like you do in golf and tennis,” Rabil says.
Rabil also says the host cities will likely be four of the eight cities recently announced for PLL teams: Boston, Albany, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charlotte, Denver, Salt Lake City, and San Diego. He also said PLL partner ESPN will broadcast WLL games.
The league will follow the sixes format, a style created by World Lacrosse in 2018 with smaller fields, only six players on each side, and other rules to speed up the game, like shorter shot clocks and only quarterly draw controls. Both men and women will play sixes lacrosse at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, when the sport returns to the Games for the first time in 80 years.
Several sports have introduced shorter, faster formats to appeal to new fans. Women played rugby sevens at the last Olympics this summer, while T20 cricket will be played in Los Angeles. (Both are shorter versions of their sports.)
The PLL, the existing men’s league, hosts its annual sixes Championship Series in February, but its four-month-long summer season has 10 players per side.
Women’s lacrosse has 12 players on each side. Last year, the NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Rules Committee recommended moving down to 11 players with only six allowed when the ball is below the restraining line, citing safety reasons.
Rabil says the decision to use sixes follows positive reception at last year’s exhibition and the building momentum toward the Olympics. “That doesn’t mean that we won’t move onto traditional field play, but from a process standpoint and from an efficacy perspective, that was the approach that we think is going to lead to greater success,” he said.
Charlotte North, the two-time winner of the Tewaaraton Award as the top college lacrosse player, has already committed to the new league. “We are honored to be a part of the WLL, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring this game to the fans in new ways than ever before,” she said. Izzy Scane—another two-time Tewaaraton winner—and former college stars Ally Mastroianni, Lizzie Colson, and Alex Aust Holman have also signed on.
College women’s lacrosse has a huge talent pool with no year-round or financially viable option in the pros. Many of the best players go on to Athletes Unlimited, a women’s sports entity that runs softball, lacrosse, basketball, and volleyball leagues. The problem is these leagues run for only a small fraction of the year; the Athletes Unlimited lacrosse season is four weeks long. When the 10-on-10 league began play in 2021, base salaries started at $8,000 but could increase with performance-based bonuses.
Because of all this, many lacrosse players graduate college at the top of their game, then spend all but one month per year working at a job where they aren’t playing lacrosse. North took the broadcasting route, immediately becoming an ESPN analyst. Many, like former Northwestern star Lauren Gilbert, work an office job. Gilbert recently left Under Armour for Athleta.
The PLL said the new league won’t coincide with mid-summer Athletes Unlimited, allowing players to do both.
