Nothing Stealth About It!

The Bay Area's newest professional sports team is the San Jose Stealth. What's the Stealth you ask? Professional indoor lacrosse, of course. Somehow I managed to go 41 years without a proper introduction to what quickly became my new favorite sport (at least for a little while).  Of course I knew of the game, but as the true West Coaster that I am, I had never watched a game until last Friday night.

The professional lacrosse league is a four-year old venture with teams largely based in the East Coast.  San Jose's team was transplanted this year from Albany, NY where it was known as the Albany Attack.  We joined about 8000 novice fans at the indoor arena known primarily as the home of the San Jose Sharks.

To my novice eye, the game looked like a slower version of hockey (that's a good thing because I can't keep up with hockey.  But the game goes beyond hockey and adds elements of football and even a bit of the Harlem Globetrotter thrown in for good measure.  The game has a violent edge to it.  Unlike its hockey cousin, this game arms the combatants with weapons and they are not afraid to use them. Theoretically they are trying to get the ball free, but the stick is violently poking and slapping it opponent. The poking and slapping then leads to the mandatory equipment emptying show fights.

The fast paced game was fun to watch as the players alternated between finesse and trickery followed by muscle and guts. In the game we saw, the Stealth dominated with a 3 goal lead at half time. Their East coast opponents came back with a 6 goal third quarter and took a two goal lead into the four quarter. The Stealth came back with minutes to go to grab a one goal lead and ultimately got an open goal score in the final seconds of play to win 10 to 8. You couldn't ask for a better sports drama.

Finally, this fledgling league invited all the fans to the club level for a post game party.  We joined about a hundred or two hundred fans and ended up meeting most of the team and securing a large supply of autographs for the boys collections. With prices as low as $15 for a lower section seat (they had the upper section curtained off) this is a must see for anyone who enjoys sports and has been deprived of this sport up to now.

January 26, 2004

© 2004