That’s the case longtime sports reporter Scott Price discusses in his new book, “The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse.” The book is especially pertinent as it discusses a controversial storyline in the leadup to the next American Olympics, the LA 2028 Summer Olympics.

Price will be in Lake Placid along with NCAA championship head coach Lars Tiffany at the beginning of August for the Lake Placid Summit Classic. He will be speaking about his newest book at 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1 at the Lake Placid Public Library.

Always a bigger story

As an English major at UNC Chapel Hill, Price was introduced to sports journalism at the school newspaper, which also happened to be when Michael Jordan was playing basketball at the school. He went on to cover the Sacramento Kings at the Sacramento Bee.

It was here that he learned to chase breaking news stories, and also where he learned that sports stories are always about something bigger than just the game. At the time, Sacramento was a town with an “inferiority complex” that was trying to become a major league city. Everything from city planning and zoning to crime and alcohol abuse could make their way into a sports story.

“You write about a lot of different things that you couldn’t necessarily write about in other sections of the newspaper,” he said. “Or if you wrote about them under sports, people would read them.”

Price went on to write for Sports Illustrated for 26 years, and has published five books including “The American Game,” all of which explore the intersection of sports and culture in their own ways.

The intersection of culture, politics and sports is perhaps never more pronounced than for the Haudenosaunee. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, located mostly in central New York and Ontario, include the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora Nations. They invented lacrosse and have been playing it, in various forms, for 1,000 years.

Price began covering lacrosse stories at a moment when the symbolism of the sport was crystal clear. The Haudenosaunee team, when Britain refused to honor their passports, pulled out of the 2010 and 2015 world championships.

“The sport was more than just about winning,” Price said. “It was about a lot of different things.”

As the sport began to grow, Price became more and more intrigued.

“The sport kept nibbling away at me,” he said. “The sport kind of stuck under my skin.”

He went to his editor, and said he wanted to write a book about lacrosse.

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Road to the Olympics

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“The American Game” contains many narrative threads: the Haudenosaunee, the 2006 case where several Duke lacrosse players were falsely accused of rape, the sport’s deep connections to the military, the ways the growth of lacrosse has been driven by women in the NCAA and blue collar pioneers — as opposed to the stereotype of prep school-educated “rich white men.”

Throughout his reporting, Price’s sources were generous with their time. In a time where media access to professional athletes is more restricted than ever, almost everyone he approached wanted to talk with him, even about the darker moments in the sport’s history.

“Everyone in lacrosse thinks their game is special. And I agree with them,” he said. “I think it’s more important, frankly, in some ways, than a lot of them believe or understand.”

After 370 interviews and trips around the world, including to Israel for the 2018 world championships, the end result is a mosaic that challenges the stereotypical image of a lacrosse player and highlights some of the fundamental fault lines in American society.

As he comes to Lake Placid to discuss an open debate plaguing the upcoming Olympic Games, Price’s book includes some of the messy politics involved in the brand. The presence of controversy is not new. Price, who has attended 10 Olympic games, said every event is surrounded by questions about venues, costs and scandals.

“The instant the games begin, it all goes away,” he said. “We all sort of fall in love with it, despite being as cynical about it as we want to be or try to be, there are moments that will always capture you in an Olympics.”

The Los Angeles Olympics will be the first Olympics since 1904 that has included lacrosse.

It remains to be seen whether the International Olympic Committee will change their stance on including the Haudenosaunee.

Although the book touches on many story lines, Price wanted to center the experience of the Haudenosaunee. From the moment in 1880s when they were effectively banned from their own sport in the Canadian colonies, to the current fight to be included as a nation in the next Olympics, lacrosse has always been a sort of mirror through which the Native American experience can be viewed.

“It’s a metaphor for the theft of the North American continent and the displacement of the Native American,” he said. “This is a sport that grew literally out of the woods of North America. The sticks were made of hickory, the ball was made of deer skin and stuffed with feathers.

“The question of whether the Haudenosaunee are allowed to play is one that’s still out there and is, to me, extraordinarily meaningful.”