St. Catharines Athletics Jr. A St. Catharines Athletics Jr. A The St. Catharines Athletics are a Junior "A" box lacrosse team from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. The Athletics play in the OLA Junior A Lacrosse League. The St. Catharines Athletics Jr.A squad has played in various arenas and under many different names in their history. They also had many years in which the team was defunct. However, the organization has been running successfully without danger of defunction since 1982. During their history, the team has won six Minto Cup championships (1947, 1950, 1990, 1991, 2001, 2003.) Many St. Catharines lacrosse players who played for the
Lacrosse in Canada Lacrosse in Canada Modern lacrosse in Canada has been a popular sport since the mid 1800s. Only field lacrosse was played until the 1930s, when box lacrosse was invented. In 1994 Parliament passed the "National Sports of Canada Act" which declared lacrosse to be "Canada's National Summer Sport", with ice hockey as the National Winter Sport. Lacrosse was played by First Nations peoples before the arrival of European colonists. The first documented description of the game was in 1637. The game was called "baggataway" and "tewaarathon", which was played by two teams with 100 to 1,000 men each on a