Lacrosse is a contact team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively modified by European colonists, reducing the violence, to create its current collegiate and professional form.
1994 in sports describes the year's events in world sport.
1986 in sports describes the year's events in world sport.
The World Lacrosse Men's Championship, formerly World Lacrosse Championship, is the international men's field lacrosse championship organized by World Lacrosse that occurs every four years.
The Ashes series, similar to the cricket series of the same name, was a best-of-three series of test matches between Australia and Great Britain national rugby league football teams. It had been contested 39 times from 1908 until 2003 largely with hosting rights alternating between the two countries. Since 1973, Australia has won a record thirteen consecutive Ashes series.
Sports in Canada consist of a wide variety of games. The roots of organized sports in Canada date back to the 1770s. Canada's official national sports are ice hockey and lacrosse. Other major professional games include curling, basketball, baseball, soccer, and football. Great achievements in Canadian sports are recognized by numerous "Halls of Fame" and museums, such as Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.
Lacrosse in Australia is a minor sport, with a long and proud history dating back to 1876, with a small but dedicated community of participants and volunteers. The established centres for lacrosse are in the greater metropolitan areas of Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. In these cities there are organised weekend field lacrosse competitions for men and women at senior and junior levels, played over the winter months. In the off-season, there are informal box lacrosse and sofcrosse competitions, though the majority of players in Australia are mostly of the field lacrosse type. Some lacrosse is also played in Sydney, South East Queensland, Canberra, Ballarat and Bendigo, it is very much at the developmental level.
Lacrosse has been contested at two editions of the Summer Olympic Games, 1904 and 1908. Both times a Canadian team won the competition. In its first year, two teams from Canada and one team from the United States competed at the games in St. Louis, Missouri. Only two teams, one from Canada and one from Great Britain competed in 1908 in London.
The Women's Rugby League World Cup is an international rugby league tournament, contested by the women's national teams of the International Rugby League (IRL). The competition has been held since 2000 and was incorporated into the Festival of World Cups in 2008 until 2017 when it became a centrepiece event along with the men's competition. Under the current format, eight teams are separated into two groups of four with the top two in each group qualifying for the semi-finals.
Sport in England plays a prominent role in English society. Popular teams sports in England include association football, cricket, field hockey, rugby union, rugby league, and netball. Major individual sports include badminton, athletics, tennis, boxing, golf, cycling, motorsport, and horseracing. Cricket is regarded as the national summer sport. Football is generally considered to be the popular sport, followed by cricket, tennis and rugby. A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union, rugby league, football, field hockey, bandy, squash, chesstennis, and badminton. The game of baseball was first described in 18th century England.
The World Lacrosse Men's U20 Championship and World Lacrosse Women's U20 Championship, formerly Under-19 World Lacrosse Championships (U-19), are held separately for men and women every four years to award world championships for the under-19 age group in men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse. The tournaments are sanctioned by World Lacrosse.
College lacrosse is played by student-athletes at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. In both countries, men's field lacrosse and women's lacrosse are played at both the varsity and club levels. College lacrosse in Canada is sponsored by the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) and Maritime University Field Lacrosse League (MUFLL), while in the United States, varsity men's and women's lacrosse is governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). There are also university lacrosse programs in the United Kingdom sponsored by British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) and programs in Japan.
The Rugby League World Cup is an international rugby league tournament contested by the top national men's representative teams. The tournament is administered by the International Rugby League and was first held in France in 1954, which was the first World Cup held for any form of rugby football.
The Australia women's national lacrosse team represents Australia at women's lacrosse. It is governed by Lacrosse Australia and is a full member of the World Lacrosse. They have won the Women's Lacrosse World Cup twice, in 1986 and 2005, and have been runners-up 4 times. They are currently ranked fourth in the world, finishing behind the United States, Canada and England at the 2017 FIL Women's Lacrosse World Cup, which was held in Guildford, Surrey, England, while also finishing third in the 2017 World Games women's lacrosse tournament, held in Wrocław, Poland, behind the United States and Canada, but ahead of Great Britain.
The Asia Pacific Lacrosse Championship is an international lacrosse competition contested to determine the best lacrosse national team in the Asia Pacific region. The first edition was played in Australia, the same year the Asia Pacific Lacrosse Union was organized. The following edition was held in Japan in 2005. Since then the competition is held every two years. A women's competition was introduced in 2009.
The Rugby League World Cup is an international rugby league tournament currently played every four years. The first tournament was held in 1954, hosted by France who had pushed for such a tournament to be approved. Since the first edition, 14 others have been held at sporadic intervals.
The lacrosse competition at the 2022 World Games took place in July 2022, in Birmingham in United States, at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Originally scheduled to take place in July 2021, the Games were rescheduled for July 2022 as a result of the 2020 Summer Olympics postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The women's tournament was played as an official event and the men's tournament as an invitational event. This was the first time that men's and women's field lacrosse were played in a six-a-side format in a multi-sport competition. This was also an absolute debut of a men's tournament in a World Games programme, as in 2017 women played the traditional lacrosse discipline for the first time in the history of the World Games. The games in 2022 were played in the sixes format, with teams of six players per side, reduced field size, and shorter games as compared to the parent field lacrosse format, which was conducive to daily tournament play. The game was played in eight-minute quarters and emphasized speed and efficiency.
A Great Britain men's national lacrosse team historically competed in the Summer Olympics in 1908 when the sport was a medal event; and in 1928 and 1948 when it was a demonstration sport.
A Great Britain men's national lacrosse sixes team is under the auspices of British Lacrosse.
The lacrosse competition at the 2017 World Games took place in Wroclaw, Poland from 27 to 30 July 2017.
United States 5–15 Great Britain 
