Fraternity Questions

[TCUCoach]

For those of you that have a large portion of fraternity players on your team. How do you handle the players who balance both?

I mean to ask, do you tell them to make a decision between your team or your fraternity? Here at TCU we try to work so that a player can do both.

I am very interested in hearing responses because it is a conflict that I can see many schools having.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

-Mark

[benji]

We usually only have problems with first year players. After that, guys seem to be able to balance it out.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of having the guys do both, but as long as they can make it to practice and keep good enough grades, it's not too big of a problem.

[MocsLax]

We're an independent team, but we've had a huge problem with this. Over the last couple of semesters, we've shot to make them more loyal to the lax team versus the frat. It's worked out really good. Prior they were always picking frat get aways over our games & there were a number a games that were seriously effected by that. But at practice & after talking to the guys you pick up that the brotherhood is not such a brother, and more than a pain in the butt. So we took complete advantage of that. Such as letting everyone know that hey, the todum pole doesn't go up & down here like in a frat (like in downgrading the members or just general complaining), it goes side to side. Every player has equal value - you could may have played here for 3 years and started, but someone who has been here for three weeks and put more work into it more than you, is sure as hell going to replace you.
Another thing that we did was make lacrosse seem more of an authentic brotherhood, like a group of guys about to go into battle, where a brotherhood actually lies. If you think about it, what does a frat actually accomplish? Nothing really, just a boys club. Lacrosse on the other hand.....
We also made our image & club "vision" & identity way bigger then that of a fraternity, and guys would rather jump into that then a boys club. (check out www.mocslax.com video and you can kind of see)

So pretty much just did everything better then a fraternity. lol[/i]

[Matt_Gardiner]

It can be difficult to balance both a Fraternity and Lacrosse committments, but it can be done. It just takes both the player/fraternity member and the lacrosse team to be pro-active and plan ahead. Get information to the players as quickly as possible so they can try and have Formals and other events not on lacrosse weekends.

It is possible to do both, it just takes a little bit of work. As a Fraternity man, I do resent Fraternities being portrayed as lying, cheating, boys clubs that do not do any good for the community. There are always going to be a few bad apples, but overall I thought that the Fraternity experience at Purdue was a positive influence on my development as a man.

[Ryan Hanavan]

We have a very large Fraternity population at the University of Idaho. As was stated earlier the freshman usually have the hardest time.

I encourage our student athletes that wish to do both and try to help them adjust so that it does not distract from team building and our mission. I try and reach everyone early on in the fall with the grades/commitment/welcome to college sports life speech and then revisit with them over the course of the semester.

I have both positive and negative experiences with dealing with players involved in fraternities but it has always been the individual and not the fraternity in the negative examples. One nice thing about having all the freshman going through rush is my returning players can help recruit from a pool that might not have originally thought about coming out. I would definitely say the positives out weigh the negatives but it does require both preventative measures and follow-up to avoid potential problems.

Initiation week is usually a low turnout week for practice but it's the fall so it doesn't really hurt us.

[NYBuilt]

Try to push the idea that frat parties will always be there, but the lacrosse games won't. It's more or less a three month season. You won't remember the party, but you will remember the victories. Away weekends are tough tho.