Nationals Start Tomorrow

[CP18]

One great way to improve your LSA team would be to go to the national championships in Dallas next year and watch or videotape the big dawgs in action. Not nearly enough LSA players realize just how good you have to be individually and as a team to win the National Championship.

The LSA team attendance was poor at Nationals this year. You want a local high school kid to play for your team. Show them that you mean business by being at the tournament and talk to them. We didn't have nearly enough LSA players mixing and mingling with the high school kids in attendance.

Agreed! You have to at least SEE the best to strive to be the best. I know I was dissapointed in the Texas A&M player turnout.

[Former LSA]

I agree with all of the sentiments being put forth. I definitely know of a number of guys going to bottom rung DIII schools just to be able to say they play NCAA lacrosse. The sad thing about that is they are giving up a higher quality education in favor of a brand of lacrosse that will do nothing much besides teaching them the geography of the Appalachians. What I am hoping for beyond anything is that people who are still involved with the league will stop using the crutch of "it's going to take time." I totally agree with that, but it's been said for about seven years now. I think that talented freshmen have started to find their ways onto the rosters of teams other than UT and A&M (most namely Tech, as of late), and that is why the level of competition throughout the LSA has jumped up a few notches over the last few seasons. Why is it that these teams, freshly infused with a higher level of talent, cannot compete on a national level? Is it because what we consider a higher level of talent is, in actuality, much lower than the rest of the country? I don't necessarily think so, but I do believe that the rest of the country has a much higher concentration of talent on their MDIA teams than those in the LSA. And that brings us back to the $25,000 question- How do we keep the homegrown talent at home?

[Karl Lynch]

We are competing on a national level. I think benji from Tech had our nonconference record at 18-19. That is a big improvement from the year before.

Keep the home grown kids at home by giving them a better lacrosse experience. More Non-conference games. More top 25 competition. More money (how did that slip in there). More hats, tshirts, games with big crowds, etc. Better coaching, more practicing, more guys at practice.

Not that we all have short attention spans, but less than seven years ago A&M was ranked in the top 5 in the MDIA. That's pretty stout. For about four years A&M was always near or in the top 10.

This past year we had two teams stay in the top 25 for most of the year. Texas and Tech. Who knows next year we may have three.

Borrowing from other threads, you can't be the best unless you play the best. That means we have to get out there and that costs more money than our organizations are willing to spend. (How did money get back in here).

[Former LSA]

Don't mention the M-word Karl. It is TABOO...

[Karl Lynch]

taboo but relevant. More relevant than we want to admit. That's part of our problem. We still have teams that won't spend anything to have matching gloves, helmets, shorts, underjerseys. Why would a high school kid want to play for a team that looks worse than than his high school team.

We need to keep working on the Lacrosse experience. Make it as good as it can be and the kids will stay here and the parents will fund it. Lose the kid and the parents will fund the other school's lacrosse programs.

[Brent Burns]

Karl is right that we would have to take big gulps and boldly use the M-word because he is talking about looking at the big picture for the individual LSA team if each program wants to compete at the level of CSUs, SSUs, BYUs, et al.

I still marveled at how ambitious and carefully-aggressive TAMU did with its schedule each year knowing that it costs money to get where they are. I know that there are teams that took their lumps such as Baylor, UNT, Tech. Southwestern, UTA when they took a lot of beating, but did they back down? NO. They persevered and will continue, and I am mighty proud of LSA's OOC record this year. I know as this is not through rose-colored glasse that LSA will get there in a few years.

We may appear to be knocked down, yet we are a very resilient conference.

Again, it will hurt to mention money and realistically look at the big picture.