About SALA
Building a lacrosse nation
The South African Lacrosse Association is the official national governing body for lacrosse in South Africa — built to take the game from grassroots to the world stage.
Our Story
Lacrosse arrived in South Africa in 2007, carried across an ocean by two teenage brothers who came to visit a family friend in Limpopo. What happened next is something neither of them expected.
A soccer session turned into a lacrosse clinic. A lacrosse clinic turned into a movement. That movement is now the South African Lacrosse Association — the country's national governing body, and the 69th member nation of World Lacrosse.
Today SALA develops players, coaches, and officials, fields national teams, and works alongside our African neighbours to grow the continental game — including hosting the 2026 African Sixes Championships in Johannesburg. Below is how it started.
Our Story · 2007
A soccer pitch in Vaalwater
There was no lacrosse in South Africa before one afternoon in Limpopo. Here's how a game nobody had heard of became a national federation.
Kip and Harrison Hart grew up in Towson, Maryland, playing lacrosse the way most American kids do. In 2007, aged 15 and 12, they travelled to South Africa to visit Joy Baber, their family's former au pair, who was running programmes for the Waterberg Welfare Society in Vaalwater, a small town about 150 miles north of Johannesburg supporting orphans and children affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Baber asked the boys to play soccer with the kids. It didn't take long to realise the kids already had soccer — what they didn't have was anything new.
“We thought, ‘What about lacrosse?’ It was something we had grown up with, and the kids there were so eager to learn.”
— Kip Hart, SALP co-founderWhat started with a handful of borrowed sticks became the South African Lacrosse Project. It grew: from that first group of 30 children to roughly 150 kids playing every week, and more than 4,000 young South Africans introduced to the game in the years that followed, as the programme spread to schools well beyond Vaalwater.
It became more than a sport. Camps added a homework club, health screenings, and scholarship support to help players finish high school and reach university — because a stick and a ball were never really the point.
Deeper Roots
The Creator's Game
Long before it was an Olympic sport, lacrosse was medicine.
The game's Indigenous North American originators — the Haudenosaunee and other First Nations — call it the Creator's Game: played not only to win, but to heal, to settle disputes, and to hold a community together. That spirit has always travelled well. In Vaalwater, and in every town SALA has reached since, lacrosse has done the same work it always has — bringing people together, one catch at a time.
It's not a coincidence that it found a home in a country built on Ubuntu: I am because we are. Two philosophies, an ocean apart, that both understood a game could be a way of taking care of each other.
Full Circle
From player to board member
The clearest proof that this works isn't a statistic. It's a person.
Phinius Sebatsane was one of the first 30 campers to pick up a lacrosse stick in Vaalwater in 2007. He kept playing, then kept teaching — carrying the programme to five more schools between the founders' visits, learning six languages along the way, and eventually earning a place at university to study communications. Today, the boy from that first camp sits on the Board of the South African Lacrosse Association, helping to govern the sport that changed his life.
“It's more than money that is needed; it's love and relationships we need.”
— Phinius SebatsaneOur Role
What a governing body does
Standards & Integrity
We set the standards for how lacrosse is played, coached, and officiated in South Africa, and represent the country within World Lacrosse and African continental competition.
People & Programmes
From school clinics to coaching certifications, we build the people who build the game — with a deliberate focus on communities where sport can open doors.
The National Badge
We select, prepare, and field the national teams that represent South African lacrosse in international competition.
What We Stand For
Our values
Access
Lacrosse should be for everyone. We take the game to schools and communities across the country, regardless of background or budget — a stick in every willing hand.
Ambition
We are a young federation with world-stage goals: continental titles, World Championship qualification, and one day, South African lacrosse at the Olympic Games.
Integrity
Fair play, transparent governance, and respect for the game's deep indigenous roots guide everything we do on and off the field.
Ubuntu
We grow together. Players teach players, clubs lift clubs, and South Africa rises with its African neighbours — because a team sport deserves a team spirit.
International Standing
Recognised on the world stage
SALA is a member nation of World Lacrosse, the international federation for the sport, and competes within African continental lacrosse alongside Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. With lacrosse returning to the Olympic programme at Los Angeles 2028, South Africa is part of the sport's most exciting era in a century.
World Lacrosse
Admitted in April 2021 as the 69th member nation, SALA holds the exclusive mandate to field South African national teams in World Lacrosse sanctioned competition.
African Lacrosse
South Africa is one of the driving nations of continental lacrosse, and hosts the African Sixes Championships in Johannesburg in December 2026 — a qualifier for the 2027 World Sixes.
Want to know more?
Whether you're a curious athlete, a school, or a potential partner, we'd love to hear from you.