(03-24-2016 08:36 AM)Tribal Wrote:  I think I'm going to regret posting this, but our gals beat Richmond in LAX.

Yeah, had the same thought when UofR entered the national Lacrosse Poll at #19.

Figured we didn't need another 20 pages of discussion on it (and, for the record, I am NOT anti-Lacrosse. I enjoyed watching it as an undergrad. Was a great way to sunbathe and watch crazy guys knock each other senseless).

Beating Richmond in any sport is always worth posting about, even if it is lacrosse!!!

This was in today's Wall Street Journal:

"The 16 schools left in the NCAA tournament are, by the tournament’s standards, the worthiest college basketball teams in the country. But a glance at these campuses reveals another thing they have in common: They are some of the country’s finest habitats for “bros.”

There is no standard definition for what makes a person a “bro,” but you generally know one when you see one. They are mostly male students from the East Coast who join fraternities, gravitate to majors in finance and can tell you exactly how many beers they “crushed” last night. They like to wear bow ties in a sort of neo-Preppy way, but oddly, also tank tops. They’ve seen every episode of “Entourage” five times and like to address each other as bro, broski or brofessor."

The article then ranked the remaining 16 schools by which had the strongest "bro-gram" as measured by 6 "bro-metrics": the popularity of greek life on campus, percentage of alumni in finance and consulting, success at lacrosse, party-school ranking, number of bro-centric items sold at the campus store and proximity of the nearest J. Crew store.

UVa came in first, narrowly edging out Notre Dame.

That may speak to the importance of lacrosse. But there are two points to consider:

1) Does anyone think being like UVa is a good thing?
2) Did anyone else notice that to be considered for this article you had to be in the BASKETBALL sweet 16 first.

Looks like the wsj is getting desperate for clicks. Embarrassing article.

(04-10-2017 07:53 PM)ttgwm02 Wrote:  Given that Richmond has beaten UNC and Duke over the last two years, got robbed out of a win over UVA two weeks ago, and is currently sitting at #15 in the country as a fourth-year program, my position on men's lax still holds. We should have it, we should consider cutting other sports to get it, and if we made the right hire, we would be nationally-prominent in a very short time.

As for the ACC, anyone who thinks we should be in that conference is insane :)

(04-11-2017 01:55 PM)WMSportsBlog Wrote:  Here Here!

(04-11-2017 02:41 PM)TribeNiner Wrote:  With only about 60 Division I lax schools, it really shouldn't be that hard to have a couple of pretty decently ranked seasons every now and then.

(04-11-2017 07:59 AM)ttgwm02 Wrote:  Its more difficult than one might think. Richmond is fully funded and has an exceptional coach. Their traditional strength in New York and New Jersey helps, as does their academic profile. For players who are not quite smart enough for an Ivy League school, and not quite strong enough to attract ACC or Big Ten attention, Richmond is probably the hottest choice right now, even over schools like Colgate, Lehigh, and Bucknell.

W&M has all of Richmond's advantages and more, so if by some miracle we had a fully funded program with the right coach, we'd be competitive very quickly.

There are a number of programs that are also fully funded, but lack Richmond's academic profile (Villanova, Providence, Furman, Fairfield, High Point, Jacksonville, etc) that have not had nearly the same level of success. Then there's Georgetown, where parents tend to drug-test their kids after every home game.

(04-10-2017 10:00 AM)TribeNiner Wrote:  Fully funded certainly seems key (though I would argue the point on academic profile for Villanova and, to a lesser extent, Providence). Does Richmond have a dedicated facility or do they still play in Robins?

(04-11-2017 02:53 PM)Sitting bull Wrote:  Call it fully funded though I think UR cut men's soccer - maybe something else - to make room for LAX. Arguably a good move for them though it did not come without some sacrifice. Not sure I would be so quick to trade off any current mens sport for LAX at W&M.

If not following CAA men's LAX - Hofstra is now 10-0 and ranked #2 in the country. With just three games to go - they have a great shot of an undefeated season. Towson and Delaware are a step back. The league has the minimum of 6 teams for auto qualifying in the tourney which includes UMAss and Fairfield as CAA members. Our champ historically makes a solid run in the tourney with Drexel, UMass and Delaware all making the Final 4 in recent years. Towson just missed last year though did beat #1 Denver in the tourney.

Tired of seeing these posts in the JW transfer thread...

Look at Mens Ice Hockey. Many small schools winning NC, competing with the big boys. I like our chances and the CAA is as strong a conference as any. This is a no brainer. Ditch Mens Golf, who consistently underperforms and add womens crew.

(04-11-2017 03:16 PM)nogretheogre Wrote:  Look at Mens Ice Hockey. Many small schools winning NC, competing with the big boys. I like our chances and the CAA is as strong a conference as any. This is a no brainer. Ditch Mens Golf, who consistently underperforms and add womens crew.

The fact remains though - in a climate in which we can't remotely fund basketball to a competent level, then how on earth would we fund a men's lax team to a level where it was worth having it?

I am entirely open to the argument that we should completely re-organize our sports program on the men's side to be only football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and lax. I see no real benefit to the school of having random sports that barely anyone even knows exists like gymnastics or golf, and to be fully competent in the above-mentioned 5 sports at our resource level you'd be better off cutting swimming, track, cross country, and tennis as well. Can let all these sports compete at the club level, which would provide just as much benefit to the school as they do now (and in fact provide much much GREATER benefit to the school by freeing resources to the main sports).

But I'm not sure that will ever happen...

(04-11-2017 03:36 PM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  

(04-11-2017 03:16 PM)nogretheogre Wrote:  Look at Mens Ice Hockey. Many small schools winning NC, competing with the big boys. I like our chances and the CAA is as strong a conference as any. This is a no brainer. Ditch Mens Golf, who consistently underperforms and add womens crew.

The fact remains though - in a climate in which we can't remotely fund basketball to a competent level, then how on earth would we fund a men's lax team to a level where it was worth having it?

I am entirely open to the argument that we should completely re-organize our sports program on the men's side to be only football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and lax. I see no real benefit to the school of having random sports that barely anyone even knows exists like gymnastics or golf, and to be fully competent in the above-mentioned 5 sports at our resource level you'd be better off cutting swimming, track, cross country, and tennis as well. Can let all these sports compete at the club level, which would provide just as much benefit to the school as they do now (and in fact provide much much GREATER benefit to the school by freeing resources to the main sports).

But I'm not sure that will ever happen...

Wont happen because that would seem to render us much more irrelevant in sports in general. Except for Golf, the sports that you cut are where we usually get most of our CAA championships from, which we tout as if we are an athletics powerhouse. Unfortunately, its a misnomer...although we are so close to turning the corner on most of those that we would keep, that I do think it should be considered.

Tribe 2011-

I disagree.

I am against cutting any of the Olympic sports. They are what makes W&M intercollegiate athletics the gem that it is. If that is the cost of "enhanced" men's hoops, count me out.

Each sport must pull its own oar.

That means that men's hoops should not subsidize the other sports, nor should the other sports subsidize men's hoops. Each sport should stand on its own.

We just won our conference title in men's gymnastics and hardly anyone knows. We have one of the top female distance runners in the country and hardly anyone knows. Same level of interest for tennis, golf, swimming, field hockey and lacrosse. I watch/listen to a ton of sports radio and never a mention of lacrosse. All I've ever heard about LAX is the Duke scandal and that's it's a northeastern US sport for the privileged. It, like the other sports I mentioned, doesn't move the needle and I can't name one national champion. More wasted money that should be focused on programs that actually benefit the College.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

I'm with the majority here I think. If getting a men's LAX team will keep Jack Whitman on campus, COUNT ME IN.

(04-11-2017 04:18 PM)Tribal Wrote:  We just won our conference title in men's gymnastics and hardly anyone knows. We have one of the top female distance runners in the country and hardly anyone knows. Same level of interest for tennis, golf, swimming, field hockey and lacrosse. I watch/listen to a ton of sports radio and never a mention of lacrosse. All I've ever heard about LAX is the Duke scandal and that's it's a northeastern US sport for the privileged. It, like the other sports I mentioned, doesn't move the needle and I can't name one national champion. More wasted money that should be focused on programs that actually benefit the College.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Lacrosse is a much bigger part of the college sports landscape than gymnastics, track, tennis, golf, or field hockey. It's THE spring sport in large chunks of the country and that's probably true for where W&M recruits a majority of its students. You say money should be focused on programs that actually benefit the College but I'm hard pressed to think of sports that would provide greater benefit than lacrosse.

Cutting sports should not be an option. Our large number of (especially) Olympic sport athletes are a credit to the institution. Even when I attended back in the Dark Ages, our most impressive students were those who competed in the non-revenue sports.

We are very ambitious in the number of sports we sponsor:

W&M: Athletes (669), Enrollment (6,214)
Delaware: Athletes (655), Enrollment (17,533)
Towson: Athletes (596), Enrollment (16,712)
JMU: Athletes (523), Enrollment (18,320)

These numbers are as of 2015.

This ambition speaks well of the College.

As some may have noticed, I am big on basketball. I want a basketball boosters club because we will need to fund basketball with ADDITIONAL donations, not by cutting other sports.

The same applies for lacrosee.

(04-11-2017 04:47 PM)zablenoise Wrote:  

(04-11-2017 04:18 PM)Tribal Wrote:  We just won our conference title in men's gymnastics and hardly anyone knows. We have one of the top female distance runners in the country and hardly anyone knows. Same level of interest for tennis, golf, swimming, field hockey and lacrosse. I watch/listen to a ton of sports radio and never a mention of lacrosse. All I've ever heard about LAX is the Duke scandal and that's it's a northeastern US sport for the privileged. It, like the other sports I mentioned, doesn't move the needle and I can't name one national champion. More wasted money that should be focused on programs that actually benefit the College.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Lacrosse is a much bigger part of the college sports landscape than gymnastics, track, tennis, golf, or field hockey. It's THE spring sport in large chunks of the country and that's probably true for where W&M recruits a majority of its students. You say money should be focused on programs that actually benefit the College but I'm hard pressed to think of sports that would provide greater benefit than lacrosse.

You think LAX would benefit W&M more than a highly competitive basketball or football team?

I just searched "Lacrosse" on FiOS. Several games over the next month on The Big Ten network, a few in the middle of the night on ESPNU, and a few on CBS Sports Network. Not a single game/match on ESPN or any major channel.

8 college baseball games on live TV as I write this. We all know what a trip to the Dance would bring to W&M...national exposure, brackets, prime TV game. As far as our FCS football team, we will play more televised games this season than UR lacrosse will play over the next decade. TV time is a fairly solid measure of public interest.

I get that some of you love LAX. I love soccer but I understand our soccer teams contribute very little to our school.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

(04-11-2017 08:50 PM)Tribal Wrote:  You think LAX would benefit W&M more than a highly competitive basketball or football team?

I just searched "Lacrosse" on FiOS. Several games over the next month on The Big Ten network, a few in the middle of the night on ESPNU, and a few on CBS Sports Network. Not a single game/match on ESPN or any major channel.

8 college baseball games on live TV as I write this. We all know what a trip to the Dance would bring to W&M...national exposure, brackets, prime TV game. As far as our FCS football team, we will play more televised games this season than UR lacrosse will play over the next decade. TV time is a fairly solid measure of public interest.

I get that some of you love LAX. I love soccer but I understand our soccer teams contribute very little to our school.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

No definitely not. I think competitive basketball would benefit W&M the most. P5 football would obviously as well but I'm trying to live 1 fantasy at a time.

The sport just makes a lot of sense to add. Its targets the student athletes we target as well as the schools and regions. Plus lacrosse schools (with clear exceptions) form a solid peer group.

Also my tv has the same number of college lacrosse games listed as college baseball games this week.

Sent from my VS500 using Tapatalk

Since this has been resurrected ....

ESPNU has lacrosse triple-header this weekend. Tribal, I think I'm going to buy you some tickets to the Final Four this year - wanna go to a game in Foxboro? Or better yet, if UVA or UR gets a home game in the NCAA playoffs, I'll take you (and the fam) if you are willing to go. I bet you'd come away agreeing in principle that we should add the sport.

Great point by Sitting Bull. CAA is a great lacrosse conference and we would have an immediate edge with our academic profile.
Though I think Hofstra is a paper tiger that hasn't really been tested in a month.

Most lacrosse parents are not stupid people and recognize that the sole value of college lacrosse (other than the ever-popular"life lessons") is getting into a school better than you otherwise would. We go D1, we vault ahead of everyone outside the Ivy League, Hopkins, Duke, UVA, and possibly Notre Dame in that regard. I can't tell you the number of lacrosse parents I have encountered that when I mentioned I gave up college lacrosse to go to W&M, they say "good god, talk about a school I'd love so-and-so to play for." Richmond has beaten out Big 10 schools like Ohio State for recruits by talking post-graduation options. If UR can do that, imagine what we could do.

Tribal, I love ya but the baseball comparison is inapplicable. College baseball is strongest overall in markets where W&M has no real presence - SEC and Big 12 country. Other than UVA and UNC, it doesn't receive much press in W&M's mid-Atlantic and Northeast sweet spots. Lacrosse does. Heck, there are now more than 230 HS teams in California alone. Most of those kids are capable of going to W&M out of state. It may be for the privileged, but so is our out-of-state tuition. I think we should be careful about using the term "privileged" when it extends deep into the middle class. Yorktown HS on Long Island is a national power and is about as blue-collar as you can get. Same for some of the great Maryland public school programs.

More than 5,000 people turned out for UR-UVA this year at Robbins. When was the last time we had that many people at a gymnastics or swimming event? And do many of our non-revenue sports get home-and-homes with Duke, UNC, Maryland and Virginia? Tennis might, anything else? We would get all in year one.

I actually think lacrosse moves the needle in our target markets and that is what matters. Richmond made an inspired decision that is paying off beautifully. We should follow suit.

College of Charleston doesn't even have a fully funded club team and they have gotten several players because of that club program. W&M, in a better location, would do very well in lacrosse.

Down here in SC, lacrosse is a footnote behind college baseball, but it gets students in the front door that a school normally wouldn't get.

Furman has hosted UNC twice, and Duke once in four seasons, with the UNC game in their first season, when UNC was #1 drawing about 1,500. A W&M game would draw more.

Chances of men's lacrosse coming to W&M are, for the foreseeable future, slim and none.

With a new president coming on in a year and a new AD starting in June they are not going to change W&M sports when they take over....too much else to do and rocking the boat by dropping men's teams to accommodate the nine or ten scholarships lacrosse would entail will not be anywhere near the top of their new agendas.

Soccer will never be dropped...men's soccer has been one of our most successful sports over decades
and has had some of our best athletes. The outcry would be thunderous if anyone dared drop it.
Same goes for men's track & field, another highly successful long-time W&M sport.

The only way lacrosse for men will ever be added is we add women's softball...that sport requires about the same number of scholarships as lacrosse. And I do not foresee that kind of budget increase the two sports would entail ever occurring.

TV coverage is a poor metric for understanding interest in the sport. Regionally in the NE and DC area, LAX has been popular for at least 2 decades. There is a young Major League LAX now. The sport is growing rapidly, much as soccer did in this country in the 70s and 80s. Think of how little soccer TV coverage there was even 10 years ago compared with today. I had not even heard of the sport before college, but now even my highschool has a club team.

WM Mens soccer, while successful, has dropped in competitiveness as the other conference team's improved...but we still have a chance yearly to impress. We are missing out on becoming a power in its earlier days before it really takes off. Its a shame that we dropped it years ago, bc frankly, we could potentially have won a NC at this point.

(04-11-2017 05:26 PM)tribeinexile Wrote:  Cutting sports should not be an option. Our large number of (especially) Olympic sport athletes are a credit to the institution. Even when I attended back in the Dark Ages, our most impressive students were those who competed in the non-revenue sports.

We are very ambitious in the number of sports we sponsor:

W&M: Athletes (669), Enrollment (6,214)
Delaware: Athletes (655), Enrollment (17,533)
Towson: Athletes (596), Enrollment (16,712)
JMU: Athletes (523), Enrollment (18,320)

These numbers are as of 2015.

This ambition speaks well of the College.

As some may have noticed, I am big on basketball. I want a basketball boosters club because we will need to fund basketball with ADDITIONAL donations, not by cutting other sports.

The same applies for lacrosee.

Honest question here - you say "this ambition [for fielding a lot of teams] speaks well of the college." Why? What benefit does it give us? I don't dispute that these sports bring in strong students, but we are WM. I don't for a second believe we wouldn't get equally strong students and leaders from our general applicant pool.

I've heard the argument that former athletes donate at high percentages, and I buy it. But I find it hard to believe that the money given by the former athletes in the aforementioned sports to cut is greater than the gains in contributions we would get from say a consistently competitive basketball program that makes the NCAA tourney every 4-5 years or so.

I would be legit curious for the arguments for keeping these sports (golf, tennis, track, cross country, gymnastics, swimming) aside from "it's the way we've always done it" or "it would shake things up too much." And I get that some of these win (cross country, tennis sometimes; gymnastics doesn't count because there are like 20 programs in the country), but I fail to see what them winning at the varsity level gets us that them winning at the club level doesn't.

(And yes - I understand the political and situational realities here and fully understand that none of these are ever getting cut, but I'm interested in a discussion here as to why we shouldn't do this. And secondarily - TribeinExile I'm not just picking on you - this is really a general question for everyone, just happened to grab your response.)

(04-12-2017 05:58 AM)BigTribe3 Wrote:  The only way lacrosse for men will ever be added is we add women's softball...that sport requires about the same number of scholarships as lacrosse. And I do not foresee that kind of budget increase the two sports would entail ever occurring.

BigTribe3 makes some excellent points. I remember in the early '80s when Men's Lacrosse and Wrestling were dropped (and I seem to remember that three sports were dropped but I can't remember what the third one was). Both the lax and wrestling teams were good and competitive. They bit the dust because of Title IX. For some reason, Women's basketball was also considered for dropping at that point but I think it was retained because it helped us meet Title IX quotas.

Anyway, W&M already carries 23 sports which is more than most schools (and way more than JMU) so I'm not sure where a financially strapped department (so they say!) gets the money for more sports. If we add Men's lax then we would have to add Women's softball to compensate. I am actually okay with that. I am envious of JMU's success with softball and figure that we should be able to do just as well.