A lacrosse game is something no boy's mother should ever have to watch.

The mother-cringing activity in the game is called, euphemistically, "checking." That means being bashed by someone's lacrosse stick. A stick isn't really a stick, mind you, it's a pole and it hurts when you get hit with it, no matter how much protective gear you've got on.

It also hurts to see your kid hit with it. Remember when your mother told you not to run with that stick because you might poke out your eye with it? She must have been talking about a lacrosse stick, only you get to poke out someone else's eye with it instead.

As sports reporter Gary Hawkins wrote in this paper recently, lacrosse is growing in popularity in Maine, where the number of teams has doubled in the last 10 years.

We're not being sexist when we say that no boy's mother should have to watch the game; the rules for the girls' version of the game forbid checking.

Maybe we are being sexist, though, when we say no boy's mother should ever have to watch a lacrosse game. It might turn the stomachs of fathers, too.

We'll say this for lacrosse, though: It's an exciting game to watch, sort of like ice hockey on grass with the sticks in the air.

Then there are the black flies buzzing around most spring games. Don't have that with hockey, either.