It might seem as if lacrosse sprouted overnight to become the fastest-growing high school success story in Georgia.

But that's not the case. The seeds were planted more than 25 years ago, leading to a crop of almost 100 high school teams playing the sport.

"My wife and I had our stuff sent down in a moving van in 1982," said Mike Butkus, a former Princeton lacrosse player who was moving to Atlanta. "All of a sudden, some guy is jogging down the street with a lacrosse stick. I stopped him and asked, 'Is there a club team here?' He said, 'Yeah, we've got a meeting tomorrow night. You should come.' So it started there."

The serendipitous meeting led Butkus into the world of Atlanta lacrosse, which began in 1974 when Geoff Berlin started the Atlanta Lacrosse Club, which traveled around the Southeast trying to expand the sport into high schools. Those efforts led to club teams at Westminster, Dunwoody and Henderson. They didn't last long.

But the early struggles gave way to a new approach by Berlin, who noticed a trend.

"You have a group of parents who start, [then] as soon as their child graduated, they moved on to other things," Berlin said. "When we started lacrosse in high schools for phase two, I [knew] I would need two parents at each school, and we would need to start a girls team and a boys team. I think those two criteria were important to survive the transition from the first set of parents."

Darlington School in Rome became the first official high school team in 1990, playing club teams and high school teams from other states. A few years later, club teams popped up at Westminster, Lovett and Woodward Academy, which seemed to give the sport a spark. Soon, Roswell, Centennial, Chattahoochee, Walton and Lassiter had teams.

By 1999, there were seven boys and six girls teams. By 2002, the numbers of both had nearly tripled, and the growth continued. Suddenly the GHSA was looking at a sport that was showing promise in a state many wouldn't expect.

"There are no historical roots for this sport in the deep South, [so] that's what really makes it kind of an interesting phenomenon," said GHSA executive director Ralph Swearngin, whose organization sanctioned lacrosse as a championship sport in 2005. "One of the things that we do when we sanction a sport, there has to be some sign that it's going to be a stable sport. I don't know that any of us anticipated such rapid growth."

In its fourth year of GHSA-sanctioned play, lacrosse has 46 boys and 48 girls teams. And the signs of growth continue to show as the sport heads into this week's state semifinals and finals.

The most significant has been the emergence of a team at Decatur, a small school that has been able to thrive and make the playoffs its first two years.

"We have a core group of kids who have come through our [recreational] program," Decatur coach Don Rigger said. "They form the core of our team, but it's not enough. We've been carefully building up our supply of jerseys, being kind of frugal. I certainly don't feel like we're impoverished. We pay for all our equipment for our players so they don't have to pay to play."

As more students choose to play, Decatur's success inspired other schools, including Grady, which started a club team this year and expects to be in the GHSA next year. Butkus says he expects schools in Gwinnett County —- the one high-profile holdout so far —- to embrace the sport within a few years.

GROWING GAINS

Growth of lacrosse through the years (includes school club teams through 2004, prior to GHSA sanctioning of the sport):

1999 ....7 boys,.. 6 girls teams

2000....10 boys,.. 8 girls

2001....19 boys,..12 girls

2002....21 boys,..16 girls

2003....24 boys,..23 girls

2004....24 boys,..32 girls

2005....32 boys,..31 girls

2006....34 boys,..33 girls

2007....40 boys,..41 girls

2008....46 boys,..48 girls

LACROSSE SEMIFINALS

> Girls (today): Westminster at Marist, 6 p.m.; Lassiter at Milton, 7 p.m.

> Boys (Wednesday): Westminster at McIntosh, 5:30 p.m.; Lovett at Milton, 7 p.m.