Baltimore lacrosse star Kyle Harrison speaks about the popularity of the sport

BALTIMORE - As a kid, we slept with our bat, glove, football or basketball. In fact, the most popular youth sports today are:

    Football
    Basketball
    Track and Field
    Soccer

But, recently, something else has been comforting children across the country as they lay down to bed - a lacrosse stick.LXM Pro Tour’s Kyle Harrison has watched the game of lacrosse grow. His father launched the lacrosse program at Baltimore’s Morgan State University in 1970.

“When I was a little guy, I just liked it. I enjoyed it, my dad was teaching it to me, so I just went with it. But once I got older, got into middle school, got into high school and heard my dad’s story lacrosse just became my passion,” said Kyle.

And now, many kids across America are following in Kyle’s footsteps, by picking up a lacrosse stick and playing the game.

According to US Lacrosse there are more than 624,000 lacrosse players. Half are under 15 years old.

USL Study Reveals Continued Growth

US Lacrosse Study

    624,593 Total players
    324,673 Youth Players
    255,314 High School Players
    32,431 College Players
    180 Professional Players

"It's awesome for people especially in the non-traditional hotbeds like Texas, Colorado, Portland, Seattle, Arizona, Vegas. All those areas where maybe they don't have a Division I or professional lacrosse team. To come out, learn from the pros," said Kyle.

"They're going to nontraditional markets, running camps, running clinics, getting involved in the community to help the sport grow," added STX’s Greg Tate.

Kyle is now a game changer. Along with the apparel company, STX, he travels the US with the newly formed Lacrosse league, the LXM Pro Tour and hosts clinics highlighting the game’s universal appeal, combining the best of other contact sports.

"If you're a basketball or soccer guy, you take the offensive and defensive strategies of those sports and it certainly correlates to our sport. And then the hitting of football for people that like contact, you get to swing your stick at people as hard as you want. You can body check," said Kyle

So as the sport gets scooped up by more kids, that baseball bat and glove might soon be replaced by another kind of stick and ball – the lacrosse variety stick.