Lacrosse is a contact team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people (Mohawk, Ojibwe, and Choctaw peoples) of North America in the eastern Woodlands (present day upstate New York, Eastern Ontario, and Western Quebec) as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively modified by European colonists, reducing the violence, to create its current collegiate and professional form.
A variant of the sport is called box lacrosse or indoor lacrosse. Box lacrosse is played by teams of five runners plus a goalie on an ice hockey rink where the ice has been removed or covered by artificial turf, or in an indoor soccer field. The enclosed playing area is called a box, in contrast to the open playing field of the traditional game. This version of the game was introduced in Canada in the 1930s to promote business for hockey arenas outside of the ice hockey season. Within several years it had nearly supplanted field lacrosse in Canada.
The game is Canada's official summer sport, while ice hockey is Canada's official winter sport.
Some of the ancestor games to ice hockey were known as ice lacrosse, along with ice polo.