The national bodies that run lacrosse.

What a national body decides

Every World Lacrosse rule book says that a national governing body may set its own date for bringing the rules into force and may vary them for national play. So the rules a player meets at home depend on the national body, and in some countries on school and college bodies too. World Lacrosse had 97 member national governing bodies after 15 April 2026; this page covers the ones the research for this site could document.

USA Lacrosse (United States)

USA Lacrosse says it was founded in 1998, under the name US Lacrosse, when eight national lacrosse organisations, most of them volunteer-run, merged. It describes itself as the national governing body for lacrosse in the United States, certified in that role by the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Its about page gives 2021 as the year it became USA Lacrosse; a search summary of its rebrand resources page puts the change in May 2021, a month that was not confirmed on a page that could be read.

Wikipedia, a secondary source, names the Lacrosse Foundation and the United States Women's Lacrosse Association among the merging bodies and gives 1 January 1998 as the founding date. USA Lacrosse itself records that the United States Women's Lacrosse Association was formed in 1931 as the rule-making body for the women's game, with Joyce Cran Barry as its first president.

In the United States, rules are split between several bodies. USA Lacrosse says it writes a stand-alone girls' youth rule book for 14U and below, works with the NFHS on the high school girls' rules, and modifies the NCAA's college rules for club college and post-collegiate women's play. The college and high school rules page explains the split.

Lacrosse Canada (Canada)

Canada's National Sports of Canada Act (S.C. 1994, c. 16), assented to on 12 May 1994, has two sections. The second recognises and declares ice hockey the national winter sport of Canada and lacrosse the national summer sport.

Lacrosse Canada traces its line to 1867. Its page on Kingston's commemorative display says that on 26 September 1867, 52 delegates from 27 lacrosse clubs in Ontario and Quebec met at Kingston City Hall and formed the National Association of La Crosse, led by Dr William George Beers, which later became the Canadian Lacrosse Association. Its history page links the 1867 association's formation to the Montreal Lacrosse Club.

Sources differ on when the current body was founded. Wikipedia's Lacrosse Canada article gives 1867, while Wikipedia's Lacrosse in Canada article gives 1925 for the Canadian Lacrosse Association. Lacrosse Canada's own page presents the 1867 association as its ancestor, while the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame's timeline and the Cornwall Sports Hall of Fame date the Canadian Lacrosse Association as a body to 1925, so the two years describe a lineage (1867 roots, a body formed in 1925) rather than an error. Whether lacrosse was ever declared Canada's national game before 1994 is also disputed: Lacrosse Canada's history page and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame say it was declared the national game in 1859, while the Dictionary of Canadian Biography calls Beers' claim of a parliamentary declaration a long-held myth, and The Canadian Encyclopedia says Beers campaigned without success in 1867 and that lacrosse was not made the national game by law. No law found names lacrosse a national sport before the 1994 Act, which is the confirmed source of its national status. The Canadian Lacrosse Association's rename to Lacrosse Canada is dated 29 March 2021 only by a search summary of an announcement page that now returns an error, so that date is unconfirmed.

Lacrosse Canada names box, men's field and women's field as its disciplines, and its site also lists sixes. It has been moving onto World Lacrosse's rule books in stages. Its Technical Bulletin 21-3 (2021) records its move to the World Lacrosse men's field rule book, with an added Lacrosse Canada policy requiring men's field players to wear shoulder pads and a protective cup, because World Lacrosse did not require them. Its memo of 28 January 2026 says the World Lacrosse box rule book, together with Lacrosse Canada's Age and Stage Modifications, applies to the 2026 box season except where the memo says otherwise, as a phased adoption. See the box lacrosse page.

England Lacrosse (England)

England's body now trades as England Lacrosse; its former name was the English Lacrosse Association. England Lacrosse's own website did not appear in any search during the research for this site, so everything here comes from secondary sources. Wikipedia says the English Lacrosse Union was founded in 1892, and that in 1996, guided by Sport England, it merged with the All England Women's Lacrosse Association into the English Lacrosse Association, whose constitution took effect in 1997, based in Manchester. The date of the rename to England Lacrosse was not confirmed.

British Lacrosse, owned in equal shares by England Lacrosse, Lacrosse Scotland and Wales Lacrosse, selects and manages the Great Britain men's and women's squads for certain international events and states an aim to be a leading sixes nation.

Lacrosse Australia (Australia)

The Australian Sports Commission's Clearinghouse for Sport records this lineage:

Wikipedia adds that the Australasian Lacrosse Union was disbanded in 1908; that rests on Wikipedia alone. Wikipedia also says the Asia Pacific Lacrosse Union was founded in 2004 by the national associations of Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan; a search summary of a World Lacrosse release describing the APLU as in its 21st year in 2025 fits that date, but neither was confirmed from a page that could be read.

The Haudenosaunee Nationals

The Haudenosaunee Nationals say the team was formed in 1983, as the Iroquois Nationals, and sanctioned by the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee, and that the organisation officially became the Haudenosaunee Nationals in 2022. They also say the Haudenosaunee were barred from international competition more than a century ago. The Onondaga Nation reported in June 2023 that Oren Lyons, Richard Hill and stick-maker Wes Patterson were among the people who formed the team in 1983.

The Nationals say the Grand Council has sanctioned women's, men's and youth teams in box, field and sixes lacrosse. Three independent sources date the team's admission to the International Lacrosse Federation as a full member to 1987: the Harvard Project's Honoring Nations profile (2002), the historian Allan Downey (2012) and the Smithsonian's American Indian magazine (2021). Other years appear elsewhere: Wikipedia gives 1987 for the indoor team, 1988 for the men's field team and 2008 for the women's programme, and an older Iroquois Nationals brochure, seen only as a search summary, gives 1992 for full nation status from the International Lacrosse Federation. No World Lacrosse or Haudenosaunee Nationals page found gives the year. The game's origins, as the nations themselves tell them, belong to the history section of this site.

School and college bodies

In the United States the NCAA writes separate men's and women's college rules, and the NFHS writes separate boys' and girls' high school rules. Both are covered on the college and high school rules page, and how each body certifies coaches is on how people learn.