Lacrosse is the fastest-growing college sport for AANHPI women
AANHPI women in college lacrosse went from 140 to 272 in ten years, up 94 percent. That is the fastest percentage jump on the NCAA sheet.
Army and Navy women's lacrosse at Michie Stadium on April 22, 2023.
Photo: Cadet Matthew Griffin / U.S. Army
Alyssa Chung scored 84 goals for Navy this spring and became the first Midshipman named a Tewaaraton finalist. She grew up in Severna Park, Maryland, where girls lacrosse is a regular high-school sport. Her father, Woosung, came from Korea. Her mother is from Ireland. She was born in Hawaii, and she picked the Naval Academy because she wanted to play and to serve.
The NCAA's 2024-25 demographics sheet put AANHPI women in college lacrosse at 272, up from 140 a decade earlier. That is 94 percent, the fastest percentage gain among women's sports with at least 100 athletes. Fencing grew 82 percent. Golf added more people because it started with a bigger group.
The sport around them grew first. Schools that add men's lacrosse usually add a women's team for Title IX. Division I now has about 130 women's programs. USA Lacrosse has girls' high-school participation up more than 40 percent from 2012 to 2022, with growth in Texas, California, Georgia, and Florida. Travel clubs filled the 2010s the way soccer clubs did a generation earlier. A lot of the new fields sat next to high schools that already had the kids.
Rec leagues can run on a couple of hundred dollars and a stick. The club circuit that feeds Division I can cost four figures once the weekend tournaments start. The 272 still come mostly from Maryland, Long Island, and the other places that already had the sport.
Megan Kitagawa started lacrosse at five in Syosset and now plays attack at Yale. She also scores for Japan. The NCAA often files a player like that as International, not Asian.
Two hundred seventy-two is still about 2 percent of the 13,906 women in NCAA lacrosse. Soccer's AANHPI group is more than twice as large and about the same share of a much bigger sport. New programs still need midfielders, which is why the percentage moved.
Los Angeles will put lacrosse sixes on the 2028 Olympic program. The Philippines already used a U.S. college roster to win a first women's Worlds game in Tokyo this summer. The NCAA count is up 132, mostly in places that already had the sport.