Should A Division Teams be Able to play in the B Division?

[Hi-Line Lax]

I just wanted to chime in here...I can totally understand the different view points surrounding this issue, having been a part of this crazy program in Montana that has seen many highs and many lows over the past ten years, and in both divisions. I think this issue is worthy of discussion, but seeing as how we have already had our league meeting and the season is already underway (with schedules to be released shortly...hopefully) I think the discussion needs to shift towards the future. I have a lot of ideas on this topic and would love to discuss them over the course of the season...we should just focus on that though and keep this productive, so it doesn't just keep getting locked out. Kyle and I have talked a few times about a C division and I really like the idea...but I also think that people really need to get over talking about division B like it means bad. There are plenty of B teams out there that could compete in division A and plenty of A teams that would have a tough time in B...that's just the reality of our league and national structures. I'm pretty tired after practice (getting ready for some tough games this weekend), but let's keep this positive and productive.

[Band]

I need to get back to my homework, but I need to clarify that I am not trying to get things changed for the coming season. I am trying to open a dialogue for changes in the future (which won't even affect me - I am graduating and out of eligibility after this year).

[Linfield]

The hard part about this discussion is that there is so much ebb and flow each year based on who the new players are at each school. I can say that Linfield was known for beating Oregon State and others by a large margin in the late 90's, but we also had 8 guys with 4 years of high school experience. Now we have 2 players with high school experience and are struggling to stay competetive. You never know year to year who are going to be strong and who is going to struggle. I think arranging the divisions based on how good you are would make it difficult to gage who was in each division every year. I do disagree with football being the guideline, I would rather look to school size as the measuring stick. But recruiting is always going to be a problem in certain areas. Due to Linfield's admission standards, if a recruit doesn't have atleast a 3.0, it is meaningless to talk to them. However, many players will easily get accepted to the public schools which makes it difficult for us to build our program and stay competitve. A final note, the greek system is the only reason we have a team, as most of our team are Kappa Sigmas, and they "virtually require" their pledges to play.

Not to cry on any shoulders or add more complaints, I post this simply to remind everyone that we all have our highs and lows and most of these circumstances are uncontrollable and unavoidable. The only major issue I see is the criteria for A and B, which I feel should stricly be based on school size. I disagree with the "play down till you're good enough" what positive is that for a struggling new B team?

Finally, one tradition we have started is inviting players from SOU and WOU to join us for some fall tourneys to promote our neighbor programs as well as our own and continue to spark pride and growth of lacrosse in Oregon.

[Timbalaned]

I say we do like the European Soccer Leagues and relagate the last two teams each year. Bottom two teams move down and the top two teams move up. Anyone with me?

[TheBearcatHimself]

Kyle and I have talked a few times about a C division and I really like the idea...but I also think that people really need to get over talking about division B like it means bad.

Hmmmm... I really don't like where the idea of a C division would take us. So if B division is stereotyped as bad, what is C division stereotyped as? Let's not even get into who you want to go there (WU and Lewis and Clark??). If you take out the bottom two of the B last year and Montana, the top one, you have a very even, very competitive division. I think rather than all this talk about moving Idaho down, it should be around moving Montana up. I don't know if this is in the thought pipeline, if it is disregard, but if you want to use the faulty "Football Standard" then just look at Montana who has been ballers at D-1AA year in and year out for over a decade. Then look at Maine beating Mississippi State, and Montana State beating Colorado, D-1AA isn't too far behind D-1 anymore. It's all getting more and more even at the higher levels.

I'm not worried about Idaho, they improved last year and they will continue to improve. I think if Idaho comes to the B they will just be another Montana who dominates like crazy.

As far as all this talk of moving Idaho down or creating a C division (dear god no) let's just do what we were meant to do and play the darn games this year and go from there. It's all too soon to be talking overhaul, especially three weeks after the annual meeting.

[TheBearcatHimself]

Albertson's in basically in the Boise area. Every single high school in the Boise area has a lacrosse team. Thusly, Albertson's has a direct feed of new recruits. Furthermore, Albertson's is a totally different environment from UI. Albertson's doesn't have a Greek system that completely hampers participation.

Just a quick point here: Willamette is in Salem, where there are 4 high school programs. Willamette is also the same distance from Portland as Albertson is from Boise (Portland being where 60% of the Oregon HS programs are). Yet in the last 5 years Willamette has gotten ONE player from an Oregon HS program (just happens to be me, go Riverdale). I don't see Albertson having any geographic advantage there.

And to reaffirm Tim's point on the Greek system, fraternities here really help our team, getting groups of guys who already know each other to come out and play and support each other off the field as well. AEKDB

[Kyle Berggren]

A C Division isn't exactly a permanent home for teams, or the idea isn't. It's for clubs starting teams & "developing" programs that aren't ready to financially commit for a season. It would most likely involve fewer games (much fewer teams) & before truly developing teams.

Jake, I take a lot of offense to your comments about definitely applying to the B division if it was an option. Is the B division less commitment? Financially, I'll bet you'd spend more due to having more games to play, & if you made the playoffs, an extra game to travel to!

This is all my opinion because I wasn't involved, but the football split was a natural split for the MCLA at the time, I hate it, but I can't blame them. They wanted to push for a distinction between the A & B, Division 1 football forced the fewest changes. Now it may not be ideal, but it did allow get everyone used to there being defining characteristics. I'm sure there will be a change at some point, although I am unsure of when that will happen. The MCLA board has lots on its plate right now, so I'd guess its at least a few years out.

As far as moving the top 2 up & down each year, I'd pass. It's a good idea if we allowed teams to be put in divisions by strength now. We have that split so a team could play in the B Division, then we don't send an AQ, lose it the following year, & their players wouldn't receive honors... Another issue would be the recruiting pool. When a lot of us say recruits on here, they're inferring they went out and convinced someone to come to their school for lax, & that's simply not the case 99% of the time. With that system you could have Whitman (not a lacrosse hotbed, <1500 students) competing for honors against Oregon (no comment, huge, great players). It's possible to make that competitive here & there, but not year in year out. If 5 people graduated from that Whitman team, they'd could end up being good enough to be the 6th place team in the B that year, but playing in the A.

Oh, and I do believe Montana's long term goal is to be in the A. From my talks with Kevin, a few key things need to happen before they believe they're sustainable, & they'll petition for the jump.

[Hi-Line Lax]

Yeah...I guess I needed to clarify that a little. What Kyle and I talked about was a "C" league for developing teams that weren't sure where they would fit in. Making a bunch of changes every year would potentially cause us to lose our AQ, which isn't fair to anyone...so the "C" league would be for teams with no aspirations of competing in playoffs.

And for the record...I would love for Montana to compete in Div 1, the A Division, whatever...I just don't have that kind of time right now. I have been working way too many hours on lacrosse over the past four years and now I really need to graduate. Things are starting to pay off here, but it's really just the beginning...we have only begun our relationship with the University, we still have no coaching staff, virtually zero alumni support, and the first high school programs in the state haven't even started yet (although we expect to have 5 teams in Montana this coming spring). I just want to clarify why we decided to stay in B...that and the teams are more fun.

[ZagGrad]

How is the UI lacrosse team different from the UI football team?

[TheNino57]

The B division shouldn't be a "farm system" for the A division. I thought the idea of the division split was to divide the big schools and the smaller schools. I don't think that it is necessarily fair to imply the B division programs are less skilled, either. True, right now most A division programs would probably snatch the W in a game against a B division program, but bigger schools (in theory) should have a better program than smaller schools. Big schools have the advantage of drawing players from a larger student body pool.

All new programs have to struggle to establish themselves in the beginning and the private schools must struggle EVERY year because they are more handicapped by academic standards than the rest of us. Speaking from a B division perspective, I have no problem playing against A division teams. I had a great time playing UW a few seasons ago, BSU last season, and Gonzaga during fall events. But I think that giving soon-to-be A division programs a chance to cut their teeth on B division programs before moving "up" because they aren't experiencing immediately success is beneficial to the A division at the expense of the B division.

[Ryan Hanavan]

I guess I'll chime in here. I've been all around the country over the last 12 years. I grew up in Buffalo and played most of my competitive lacrosse in eastern schools. I ended up in Missoula and quickly realized that there were a lot of lacrosse players at the school that wanted to play, there just wasn't a team. It takes a lot of thankless hours of your life from you and there are many times when you feel like you're just wasting yourself away on it. It's been 6 years since I graduated from Missoula and in that time I went back to Cuse for grad school and now Idaho. I started to realize my role in that time as an ambassador.

I've spent a lot of time in the bars back east telling the stories of essentially you guys, everything you're doing right now, everything I did with my buddies when I was there. When I left I never would have thought Montana would be in the PNCLL in 06-07, I never would have thought WSU would be out of the PNCLL (they had a great team when I was in Missoula). I played in the Summit tournament in Lake placid in 2000, '01, and '02 with a fellow Montana alum and we wore our Montana gear. Believe it or not someone from Bozeman was at the tournament in '01 and came over to talk to us.

I guess my point is that it took me a while to realize my role and now I think I'm back on track. When you play you should play hard. When your eligibility is up you should realize that your job isn't done. We're scattered all over the country and world and we need to do our part in building the sport. Moscow, ID has one high school lacrosse program, northern ID has roughly 5 or 6, including Gonzaga Prep in Spokane. It sounds like Missoula is picking up a high school program. We need more high school programs in this region! We need to start filling the gaps between Moscow, ID and Boise, ID or Pullman, WA and Seattle, WA, etc. We need "feeder programs" to start building a more sustainable future for all of our schools. We need to all do our part to make the sport more visible to the kids in our areas. I think every one of the PNCLL schools should try and put on summer clinics to bring in the local kids and teach them something about the game, invite high school A.D.'s to your home games. Get the word out. Money is always a huge issue, I'm still waiting for my first check as the UI coach (but I think the guys might have been pulling my chain!).

I really think the long-term answer is more high school lacrosse programs and this will lead to more support from our Universities.

[ZagGrad]

In 2000, I started the Prep team and have since contributed to some of the colleges playing lacrosse (Western, WSU, GU). I even have some kids at UI, who, for whatever reason, choose not to play. The growth is there, it is just not as prevalent as Seattle or some cities in OR.

Personally, I think a school should always move up, not down. There will be some rough times, whether it be coaches, players, sanctions, etc., but typically, everyone recovers. There have been some good posts about some teams fluctuating as powerhouses and teams will continue to fluctuate. I wouldn't get discouraged if I was at UI--I think they have a good thing going. Shoot, look at where they are now...they are in a league that doesn't include WSU...and I thought I would never see that.

[Dan Wishengrad]

Mike Band,

I really don't understand where you are coming from. There are numerous reasons why we can't have an "A" team move down to the "B" Division, and these are already spelled out clearly in this thread and the other one.

And even IF Idaho was allowed to move down, you would not be eligible for the post-season and no Vandal could receive all-star consideration. So what would be the purpose of such a move? To win a few games, perhaps? Well, there is nothing stopping you from scheduling B games and playing them anyway!!!! Idaho played six total games in 2006 -- count 'em, six. You scheduled zero games against B teams. What exactly is keeping you guys from playing some B games?

Washington went 3-8 last season, with only one win over a division A team -- Idaho, in a close game that could have gone either way. We also beat two B teams. I guess if we had lost to the Vandals I should be begging to have the Huskies move down to the B Division here because we stunk so bad in 2006?

[Blake]

You scheduled zero games against B teams. What exactly is keeping you guys from playing some B games?

I apologize if I don't articulate this very well.

The argument is that Idaho is essentially trapped in a cycle of failure because they aren't allowed to move down. Why don't they schedule more B teams? Because they can't make the financial obligation when they already have to pay for their A schedule. Why can't they make the financial obligation? Recruiting is hard. Why is recruiting hard? Because they can't win games, small recruiting base, etc. Why can't they win games? Because they are playing more well developed teams.

Suggested answer: schedule more B teams.
We can't because.........then the cycle starts all over again.

Interesting statistic:
University of Montana - 13,602 students
University of Idaho - 12,476 students (and frankly, until this year their football team should have be 1-AA)

Yet we're coming down on Idaho like it's a mortal sin that they want to move down a league and develope their skils both from an on the field and from an administrative stand point. Lets not act like they're being unreasonable. They want to move down for the SAME REASONS that Montana wanted to move down a few years ago. I'm glad Montana moved down and I think it helped their program tremendously. I don't think it would be any different for Idaho.

When I was at the University of Utah, big schools were allowed to play in Div B, but they did not participate in the post season. There didn't seem to be too many complaints.

[Band]

Mike Band,

I really don't understand where you are coming from.

Then you haven't read anything that I have written here. Read Blake's post right above this one if you care to, he summarizes it very well.