As promised in our introductory newsletter, we plan on using the website portion of our beehiiv for practical/useful purposes in addition to the dumb bullshit you’ll find in our emails. For now, that means things like schedules and standings for various sports leagues around the world and in our own backyard. (In this scenario, our backyard is “America”.)
With this in mind, we wanted to present the schedule for the Premier Lacrosse League’s Men’s and Women's Championship series (found below, if you’re impatient,) which will take place between February 27th and March 8th. The tournament features the “Sixes” format, which employs the following differences from traditional “field”2 lacrosse:
The field of play is smaller, at 70 meters by 36 meters.
Face-offs only occur at the beginning of each quarter and overtime: play is restarted after goals with the goalie taking the ball out of the net.
30-second shot clock.
Four eight-minute quarters, plus multiple three-minute sudden death periods if a tie remains after regulation.
15-minute halftime intermission.
Rosters consist of 12 players.
Everyone plays both offense and defense.
No long crosses (sticks).
Brad hates this format1. But, because of its future use in the Olympics (LA28, if we’re still allowed to have an Olympics at that point) it’s being used a way to ‘sell the game’ for these two tournaments that kick off the PLL experience for 2026.
In addition to the different format on the field, the tournament will feature a somewhat unusual structure: The top four teams from the 2025 PLL seasons compete in a round robin format over the course of five days (and six games, with double headers on four of the days and a quadruple header on Saturday, Feb. 28) with the top three teams advancing to the knockout rounds.
The top-performing team in the round robin format will receive a bye into the finals, while the second- and third-place teams will play in a semifinal to determine their opponents.
Confused? We’ve got you covered with this convenient calendar/infographic:
Color-coded at Brad’s suggestion!
As for the PLL regular season, don’t worry, it will not be played with this format. Either during games themselves — it is just regular-ass field lacrosse (complimentary) — or how they’re scheduled, with a somewhat standard structure for a (relatively) small sports league:
Wondering which teams are playing when? TOO BAD. Sorry, that was harsh, but the PLL hasn’t released those details yet. Which is how we end up with this calendar, or, we guess, skeleton of a calendar, for the time being. Once an actual schedule with real matchups is announced, we’ll update this space accordingly. But for now, we suppose it’s a good time to make space on your calendar if “watching a barnstorming lacrosse league when it comes to your town” seems like it could be of interest to you on a long weekend.
And as to the reason why there isn’t a concrete schedule is? The PLL is weird. So weird, in fact, that I wanted to bring Brad in — which is something we’ll try now and refine going into the future — with a format we’ve referring to internally as “Why did God curse us with the thirst for this knowledge?”, which will hopefully give you insight into the kind stuff we talk about during the day, mostly for fun (and, I suppose, the betterment of this website/newsletter) with a very real3 conversation that we had:
Nick: So, can you give me a quick explainer of how the PLL season works?
Brad: Yes.
Nick: Like, they have these weekends, basically, but that's all I got.
Brad: Okay, so when the league started, the teams didn’t have city designations (which I preferred). It was basically Whipsnakes Lacrosse Club, Atlas Lacrosse Club, etc
Nick: And they would do barnstorming tours, essentially?
Brad: Exactly. Then, in 2024, they gave the teams cities.
Nick: More as, like, a home base for ticket/merchandise selling purposes? Or is there any actual tangible reason?
Brad: Well, they continued the tour model with the one change being that when it was a team’s “homecoming” they would play two games that weekend (and give one of the other teams a weekend off). So, there’s no real reason. They “get involved in the community,” but that’s about it.
Nick: That feels like somewhere in between the two “totally for merchandising purposes” and “completely arbitrary”.
Brad: Yeah. As I said, each team has a homecoming weekend, however, there are still some weekends that are held in cities that don’t have teams. For those weekends they usually have a theme “throwback” or “Native American heritage” and all 8 teams play.
Teams are split into an eastern and western conference: Play everyone in your conference twice and other conference once for 10 games. They seem to have made the season a bit longer for 2026, so that may change this year, but that’s TBD.
Nick: So, is it 8 men's and 8 women's teams?
Brad: 4 women, the women’s league is brand new this year. They did a bit of a soft launch at last year’s Championship Series, but they’re going to be going full 10-on-10 after this year’s CS.
Nick: Will they have the same schedule as the men’s?
Brad: Yes - but not all weekends, just most.
Nick: Of course, have to save something for next year, like gender parity.
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1 “It is a format that isn’t needed and was only created so a bastardized version of the sport could be in the Olympics.” - Brad
2 As opposed to “box” lacrosse, which is essentially the Arena Football to American Football, and was invented so that Canadians could play it in hockey rinks.
3 Edited for clarity, as is tradition.