After the postgame handshakes between the girls’ lacrosse teams from Moorestown (N.J.) and Ellicott City Mount Hebron (Md.) last Saturday, Tommy McClelland and K.C. Knobloch, and Brooke Kuhl-McClelland and Deanna Knobloch gave each other back-slapping embraces. The former are not only assistant coaches for their respective teams, but the husbands of their head coaches.

You might not have seen this sort of thing even five or 10 years ago, much less at the dawn of Title IX 35 years ago.

But that’s where the game of lacrosse has come of age. You have entire families embracing the sport and even coaching it together. The best teams find each other and schedule each other.

Which makes it odd that the scheduling for sports in the Maryland Public and Secondary Schools Athletic Association is right out of the 1950s.

Like in field hockey and in many other sports, Maryland limits its girls’ lacrosse schedule to twelve games. Compared to other states in the Union, it’s an almost unconstitutionally low number of games. I mean, the seasons are about the same length from the first practices to the state tournament, but there are many, many more practice days between games on some schedules.

And let’s face it: how fun is practice, compared to actual game play? The universal answer is, “Not much.” If you go and compare the length of sports seasons in Maryland to those in neighboring areas like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Delaware, you might be surprised — even to the point where you shouldn’t be surprised that numerous students from extreme northeast Maryland, Baltimore, western Maryland, and areas near the Virginia border often go to private schools or find ways to transfer out of the MPSSAA’s purview to further their athletic careers.

Why do I bring this up? Next year, the Howard County lacrosse schedule will realign to allow just a single non-conference game for each of its schools. It’s possible that this past weekend’s Hebron-Moorestown game may be the last ever played because of the insistence of adults on too much control over the affairs of schools and their children.

But if enough pressure is put on the statewide rulesmakers (in this case, the state legislature) as well as the people who run county sports, perhaps changes can be made. There does, however, need to be a recognition that public-school athletics in Maryland may be changed forever if enough students, seeking keener competition, go to schools where teams can schedule as they see fit.