The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has unanimously voted to approve boys’ and girls’ lacrosse as a sanctioned high school championship sport beginning in the 2023-24 school year.
The WIAA Board of Control unanimously approved sanctioning the sport of boys and girls lacrosse, beginning with the 2023-24 school year. More details to come. #wiaalacrosse pic.twitter.com/S4KhXHLXFr
— WIAA (@wiaawi) December 2, 2022
The vote came during a Board of Control meeting today and further details on how the season will be set up and championships conducted will come at a later date.
Wisconsin becomes the 25th state in the country to provide formal recognition for lacrosse from the state’s high school governing body. Wisconsin is the first state to add the sport as a championship sport since Utah, which played its first state-sanctioned championship games in 2021 after a year’s delay to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other states to recently adopt lacrosse as a state-sanctioned championship sport are Ohio (passed in 2015, championships began in 2017) and Illinois (passed in 2016, championships began in 2018). Tennessee passed a vote in 2018, but in March 2020 announced it was indefinitely delaying implementation that had been scheduled for 2021.