Wheelchair and adaptive lacrosse.

What adaptive lacrosse means

USA Lacrosse describes adaptive lacrosse as the game modified for players with disabilities. Its adaptive lacrosse page (read 23 October 2026) lists five formats:

• Inclusive
• Unified
• Wheelchair
• Impairment-specific
• Mainstream

The research for this site recorded the names of the five formats but not USA Lacrosse's definition of each, so they are listed here without descriptions rather than with guessed ones.

Wheelchair Lacrosse USA

USA Lacrosse's article of 21 August 2025 describes Wheelchair Lacrosse USA (WLUSA) as founded in 2010 and as "the world's first wheelchair lacrosse league", and says it has helped start dozens of programmes. Those are USA Lacrosse's descriptions.

Accounts of how wheelchair lacrosse began differ. USA Lacrosse gives 2010 for WLUSA's founding. A wheelchair manufacturer's blog, seen only as a search summary and not read in full, traces the game to two athletes in San Diego in 2008. The 2008 account has not been confirmed, and USA Lacrosse's 2010 is the only date from a governing body.

The Adaptive Lacrosse Games

USA Lacrosse reported these points about the first Adaptive Lacrosse Games, hosted by WLUSA in Pittsburgh in August 2025:

Results of the Games are not given on this page. The sixes format used for the adult limb-different games is described on the sixes page, and the indoor game on whose rink wheelchair lacrosse is played on the box lacrosse page; neither page describes how those rules are adapted for adaptive play, because the adapted rules were not read.

Rules

World Lacrosse's playing rules page links suggested wheelchair rules, dated 3 May 2016, alongside its four discipline rule books. They are described as suggested, and they were not read for this site, so no wheelchair rule is set out here.

USA Lacrosse publishes an Adaptive Lacrosse Guidebook, in 2024 and 2025 editions, and an Adaptive Lacrosse Starter Guide (2025). Both appeared in search results, but neither was read, and every USA Lacrosse PDF tried during the research returned an error. Their contents, and the wheelchair rules as WLUSA writes them, are not described here.

Safety and equipment

The research behind the safety section of this site did not cover wheelchair or adaptive lacrosse policies, and none of the equipment rules on this site was written for adaptive play. Nothing here should be read as saying what equipment an adaptive player needs; that is for the programme, its coaches and, where relevant, medical professionals.

What could not be confirmed

• The founding story of wheelchair lacrosse before WLUSA (one manufacturer's account, unconfirmed).
• The content of World Lacrosse's 2016 suggested wheelchair rules.
• The content of USA Lacrosse's adaptive guidebooks.
• Adaptive lacrosse outside the United States.

Coach education and youth rules in general are on how people learn.