OVERVIEW Box lacrosse is played inside the confines of an ice hockey rink, with glass and rink boards intact. The playing surface consists of a green dieter turf carpet that is laid down over the hockey ice. Combined, teams score an average of 25 goals during an NLL game. Each game consists of four fifteen-minute quarters. A tie at the end of regulation is decided in sudden-victory overtime. Each team has five runners (forwards, transition players, and defensemen) and a goaltender on the floor during the game. Each team dresses 19 players (17 runners and two goaltenders) per game, and the players rotate on and off the floor in shifts, similar to ice hockey. HISTORY OF BOX LACROSSE Lacrosse is a traditional indigenous people’s game and was first encountered by Europeans when French Jesuit missionaries in the St. Lawrence Valley witnessed the game in the 1630s. Lacrosse for centuries was seen as a key element of cultural identity and spiritual healing to Native Americans. Box lacrosse is a modern version of the game that was invented in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s. The roots of indoor lacrosse are obscure, but its invention has been attributed to one Paddy Brennan, a field lacrosse player and referee from Montreal, who, being annoyed by the constant slowing of play from balls going out of bounds in the field game, experimented with indoor games at the Mount Royal Arena during the early 1920s. The form was also adopted as the primary version of the game played on Native American reservations in the US and Canada by Iroquois and other Native peoples. It is the only sport in which the American indigenous people are sanctioned to compete internationally, participating as the Haudenosaunee Nationals.