by mavlax23 on Tue Jan 15, 2008 10:46 am
I had no idea that our Lacrosse After Dark party would cause such a battle of words throughout the league and lacrosse community. For us we weren't trying to just play some lacrosse and any facility that was willing to let us in at any hour we were all ears. I guess it is our fault, Mankato did take care of the scheduling on this one, but it wasn't due to lack of effort or laziness that we couldn't secure good indoor times. We contacted almost all of the domes on that list probably 4 months or more in advance and those were the only times on those weekends that were available.
We were stuck between a rock and a hard place, we had multiple teams contacting us to come to MN and play against UMLL teams and the OOC teams had given us the dates that they could play on. It was either turn down teams and burn bridges by telling them they can't come here, or do something a little out of the ordinary and play at odd hours. To me and the teams involved it was a no brainer and we welcome the challenge of finding a starbucks open at 3am in order to play more lacrosse. I think the fact that teams are willing to come here and play at odd hours just to get in games against UMLL teams is a good thing, and in turn reflects positively on our league.
By the time we were contacted by the OOC teams every dome was booked solid we had no choice, it was either midnight - 6am or nothing. It was a large block of time needed to play multiple games in the same weekend at the same venue, it was not just one or two games to schedule dome time for. We could not predict the future and know to pay for dome time a year in advance to get good times in the hopes of getting enough teams to commit to coming to MN.
I don't apologize for the odd hours on the schedule for all to see (and this somehow reflecting poorly on our league), in my eyes it shows commitment and dedication and as long as all the teams involved can make it work then I don't think there should be any arguments made about how we are "bush-league".