Why aren't the East Coast schools better?

[Timbalaned]

I am going to state this first and foremost, this is not a cut at any of the programs in the MCLA at all, strictly to start a conversation and for my own knowledge.

While I have had similar thoughts in the past, I met some interesting people this past week that felt similarly, mainly a one Ethan. We had an exasperated debate on why teams such as BU, BC, Northeastern, etc. aren't dominating MCLA lacrosse and teams like UCSB in the middle of CA are winning National Championships. It would seem to me that with all the talent and the history of lacrosse in this region that even the kids that weren't killer in high school should still dominate this league. And I don't buy the "well the guys have too much pride to play club" bull either. If you are a lacrosse player and love the game as much as I think all of us do, you are going to play at any opportunity you have. I just would think that these schools with these big numbers and large groups of kids that have played forever, that a PCLL team should have 3 or 4 championships by now and not back-to-back belt buckles and rings we had to see every time we went out in Dallas, like gooners Ravaging Beast. (so the last part was a personal shot )

[Laxdad50]

I belive that East Coast Opportunity may be to blame. As far as the Northeast goes you cannot drive 100 miles without hitting a D1 D2 or D3 school. At the high school level Club ball in the area is thought to be an post grad thing.
Many of the kids grow up knowing only NCAA and are not subject to all the good things that make MCLA a viable option.

Championships like the excellent tourney that just finished are not widely known here in the Long Island area or north.

As the father of a pair of NCAA players in years past I can tell you it is something that only awareness will change. The east coast knows full well that the rest of the country will and is catching up quick. South and west having all year ball availability and more and more expertise in coaching returning to the western fold.

The teams you are seeing in the competition from the east are comprised of guys that have either decided or had it decided that they will play outside the NCAA. They may not be the cream of the crop or they may be devoting their efforts in a split with other ventures. I cannot speak for them.
They may not have been killer in High as you say but many are in the dark as to the availability of Club Lax.

I will say that as MCLA grows and is considered by a larger and larger talent pool in the east there may be a change.

[StrykerFSU]

That response by LaxDad50 was perfect. I'm sure all of the players at BC, NU, etc have excellent reasons for choosing their schools but lacrosse might not have been an important one. In the East, if you love to play lacrosse and are good enough then you play varsity at some level. There may be players who are exceptions to this but not enough to stop Western dominance in the MCLA.

You have to remember that even in a state like Virginia there are at least 10 colleges off the top of my head playing NCAA lacrosse. The numbers in Pennsylvania and New York are even higher. The perception of "club lacrosse" is of the NCLL (beer league) because that is the league that the vast majority of schools play in. A lot of kids are too proud to play in the NCLL because of its reputation.

Now why don't east coast kids go out west to compete in the MCLA? I don't really think it is as much the pride issue, i.e. being too proud to play MCLA club. I believe they stay in the East for the same reasons kids stay out West. It is what they know. I don't know that a kid from central New York would really view playing top club ball in Santa Barbara as being more attractive than competing for a D3 National Championship at Cortland State. Maybe the MCLA would be a better option than toiling away in the bottom of D3 but such a player might not possess the skills to swing the balance of power even if he could find an MCLA team to play for in the East.

From my experience growing up in Va, I didn't know anything about the MCLA, though I did know from my Mormon teammates that BYU played good ball.

Finally, let's be honest here. It takes essentially the same amount of effort and dedication to be a top-flight MCLA team as it does to play varsity. In the East, where there are multitudes of varsity options, why should someone pay to play for arguably less prestige?

[LaxTV_Admin]

We need better marketing in those markets. The NCAA is all most of those players know. I grew up in Northern Virginia, a hot bed for lacrosse talent, but to most of us it was DI, DII, DIII, or men's league after college. I did not even know about the MCLA until I got to Marquette.

If we can try and spread the word that it exists to these high schools, there could be an increase of players coming to the MCLA. A team like George Mason would be a good candidate to help spread that news. We can also do it through recruiting, by contacting coaches at our old high schools, etc.

[dgr01002]

I also have to chime in to this question and respond. East Coast schools ARE better. Lacrosse is flourishing and has always been the central coast for quality recruiting (and yes, it's grown ridiculously out West and South). But From Vermont to Massachusetts to Rhode Island all the way through New York, PA, Virginia and even North Carolina, lacrosse is absolutely dominated by D1-D3 programs.

On the West Coast, MCLA is, for the most part, all there is. It's the only game in town, so to speak. And that's a great thing for the MCLA right now. Hence, you get quality programs, especially considering some of the great schools like BYU, Oregon, Arizona, etc.

In New England alone, you have countless D3 programs from Amherst College, to WNEC, to Williams, Colby, Springfield, Babson, Bates, Middlebury, MIT, Brandies, Tufts, Conn College, Endicott, and so on and so on. There's too many to mention. And I'm not even mentioning NY, PA, NJ, Md, VA and NC.

Jeez, just count the D1 programs in NY that a club team has to contend with. East Coast kids grow up watching D1-D3 in their home towns.

So, the allure of "club" is slightly less when a high school grad can go to a college or university just across town with a full-on varsity program.

The MCLA is catching on quickly all over the East Coast, but you have to remember most East Coast high school players have a lot of choices, especially the good ones. As teams like Northeastern, BC, U of Georgia grow their programs and become competitive, the entire East Coast MCLA will get better and better. Right now, the MCLA simply isn't the only game in town, but it's getting better and better. (You also have to remember BC, UNH used to be D1 varsity programs too, so they have done a great job rebuilding from such a tough "cut" to their lacrosse traditions.)

The MCLA is in its infancy across the country and especially on the East Coast. So, we have to give it time and help support the programs legitimacy. It's just a lot tougher when a D1-D3 team is literally right in your backyard to compete with.

[Daniel Morris]

Brauck, I wish I had an answer for you for this question. It is something that has driven me nuts for a long time. Being a NY Hudson River Valley high school player just 20 minutes north of Manhattan, and attending an east coast college and playing four years with BU, I have seen firsthand what you are talking about, and I am still stumped.

Here are some random thoughts (and mind you, some of this applies to SELC and CCLA, but I am speaking from a PCLL viewpoint)...

The east coast varsity programs do eat up a lot of talent. Where there was a post recently how in the state of Michigan, two or three players were attending Div I programs, I can cite instances where neighboring high schools were sending that many players from their TEAM alone. When I graduated, Yorktown sent 3 guys to Syracuse. And that was just the start of where their players went. Hopkins, Loyola, Maryland. The Yorktown/Lakeland games had bigger turnouts than our nationals did, and the stands were full of scouts. If you were a good player, you got a look and an offer to play in Div I - III. Some went, some (like me) had very specific education goals and went for a certain program. But even the good players had a chance to play somewhere, leaving only the weaker talent to attend schools with club programs.

On top of that, there are only a handful of school without varsity programs in the far east, limiting the MCLA options. We don't have one school in the NY/NJ area. On the flipside, the WCLL and the RMLC have barely any varsity programs and a ton of schools. The WCLL alone is massive. A player in California could stay closer to home instead of travelling across the country, get a great education, and have an amazing lacrosse experience, for under $10,000 a year tuition (at a state school). UMass, SUNY, Maryland, Virginia state schools, they are almost all varsity out here. UMass and Vermont have great club programs, but they can never be MCLA.

Next, the MCLA is fairly new on the upper east coast. Whereas the WCLL has existed as a megaconference for a long time, before joining the MCLA, the PCLL was really closer to the NCLL than a functioning alternative to playing varsity. We joined the MCLA only about eight years ago. When I played in high school, I never even guessed club ball had any organization, much less functioning leagues. Getting the idea into the heads of east coast students that MCLA lacrosse can be is as good as Divisional lacrosse is taking longer than I would have hoped. But the last few years, the PCLL has made great strides in this area.

Finally, weather is killing us. And it isn't just weather, it is weather combined with resources. We have very few indoor facilities, and they are extremely expensive because they are so rare. If a school is lucky enough to have such a facility, our programs can't use it. We don't get many schools travelling out here to play us because the weather is too risky to schedule a trip around during most spring breaks, but the only way to get better is to play better teams. When we travel, most of our teams have only been on a field one or twice for practice, playing schools that have 10-12 games already played! There has been a push by our teams to move the date closer, but none of the other leagues want it. We peak, like other teams, towards the end of the season, but at that point, all we are playing is each other, desperately trying to get our games in under the wire. And since no one has seen us in two months, we drop in the polls, leading to a poor seed at nationals.

So I think Stryker and LaxDad50 have nailed it in their posts. But as the perception of the MCLA improves, so will our recruiting efforts. We will never get the bluechip players, there are just too many nearby varsity options, but we can get players who were solid talents that are interested in a particular school, and not the varsity experience and all the baggage that comes with it. We are also hoping to see more teams travel to us, just as our teams have been travelling to them.

The building blocks of a good league are there. We have some great coaching, some amazing talent, and we are starting to get noticed. We just need to build on that momentum. But as the MCLA name's value increases, so will our prospects for the league.

[DanGenck]

The east coast has varsity lacrosse and most players gravitate toward those programs.

I know lacrosse is growing, but DI and DIII rosters are still dominated by east coast players.

[shep]

Pretty much all the above posts sound spot on to me. Why would you play MCLA ball if you can play varsity 1-2 hours from home? Further, the hotbed lax community still views it as "club ball", a significant drop in competition, talent, and status from any varsity option. This is obviously not entirely true and is weakening every year, but it still exists. The farther away an MCLA program is from NY and MD, the more of an advantage they have.

[Hi-Line Lax]

Just a sidenote... our admissions office bought 300 posters from our team this year to specifically take on east coast recruiting trips and they said kids were eating them up (but also that they were pretty shocked that lacrosse existed in Montana). We've just got to keep spreading the word.

[Zeuslax]

Good responses above. It has been interesting to see the perception of our league change over the years with people that I talk to at home in Baltimore. 6 years ago I use to get the, "ohh, yea, club ball". Now people say things like, "are you guys in the same league with MI, BYU, CSU that's great, what a solid option". The perception problems still exist and on a regular basis. The East Coach opportunity is ever looming. In most respects it comes down to people just not knowing. I have to admit. It is frustrating at times explaining and defending our league. However, we have to be careful about jumping to conclusions and defending it when it isn't necessary. Guilty yesterday with a coach I must admit. He asked me if I had pull over the admissions process.

[Tim Gray]

Two arguments/reasons:

1. There are 17 NCAA teams west of PA (8 are in OH). There are 27 NCAA teams in MA alone. There are 224 varsity teams in the NCAA (those 17 teams west of PA make up 7.5% of NCAA lacrosse). The 44 teams in the PCLL and SELC make up 22% of the MCLA teams. Less NCAA teams out west, less MCLA teams out east.

2. While for the most part the West Coast's best players stay at home and play MCLA, most east coast players get an opportunity to play varsity lacrosse somewhere. Here at NU we have very talented players, most of whom could've or had played varsity lacrosse somewhere, but chose Northeastern as a school. The fact that NU had lacrosse was a bonus to them.

[More Cowbell]

2. While for the most part the West Coast's best players stay at home and play MCLA, most east coast players get an opportunity to play varsity lacrosse somewhere. Here at NU we have very talented players, most of whom could've or had played varsity lacrosse somewhere, but chose Northeastern as a school. The fact that NU had lacrosse was a bonus to them.

This is the same situation that we have at BC...pretty much all of our players were recruited to play NCAA at some level, but chose BC for other reasons. I don't know if I agree with the idea that PCLL teams can't get blue chip talent (right now we have players that were recruited to Duke, Middlebury, Harvard, etc, and we have recruits coming in that were recruited by Princeton and Georgetown). So talent-wise, I think East coast teams could definitely compete with West coast.

The biggest difference in my mind is the organization of the programs. BC has only had an MCLA team since 2002, while programs out west have had teams since the 70's. Someone told me that BYU's coach has been with the team for something like 10 years...and at BC we've had 3 different coaches in 3 years.

Also, when I was a freshman, we had players on the team that were on our Varsity team when it was cut. A lot of these guys really added to the attitude that "it's just club ball." So they went out and partied all the time, and just played lax on the side. As the PCLL has developed, though, it has become much harder to compete and get to Nationals...a lesson that BC learned in 2005 and 2006.

I can only speak for BC, but I know that here, the players have made a conscious decision to take this more seriously and have made our goal a national championship. This year we got much, much more organized, and we got a great coach, and that showed. I think the same is true at NU...they got together, decided to play to win, got more organized, and we all saw what happened with them in the last couple years.

So in my opinion, the only thing holding back PCLL teams is league maturity...I think that as BC, NU, and other PCLL teams get more and more organized, we will start to see national champs from the PCLL.

[DwinsChamps]

There are 17 NCAA teams west of PA (8 are in OH). There are 27 NCAA teams in MA alone. There are 224 varsity teams in the NCAA (those 17 teams west of PA make up 7.5% of NCAA lacrosse). The 44 teams in the PCLL and SELC make up 22% of the MCLA teams. Less NCAA teams out west, less MCLA teams out east.

Bingo.

[PigPen]

Being a NY Hudson River Valley high school player just 20 minutes north of Manhattan

Where the best lax on Earth is played-but no one knows it.

When I graduated, Yorktown sent 3 guys to Syracuse.

Kavovit, Carcaterra and who else? Was it Parriot?

The Yorktown/Lakeland games had bigger turnouts than our nationals did, and the stands were full of scouts. If you were a good player, you got a look and an offer to play in Div I - III. Some went, some (like me) had very specific education goals and went for a certain program.

That is the truth-it was always fun to go the Section I championship and see the last row of the grandstand filled with the likes of Moran, Emmer, Tierney, etc.

I chose A&M because I wanted to go far away from home, be in the Corps (where the military commitment is optional-unlike the academies) and play some lax.

Someone had put me touch with Scazzero and I thought it sounded like pretty good lacrosse for Texas in the early 90's. My point, like Dan, is that we both had other goals than just playing lax (being recruited by Alfred and Sacred Heart wasn't all that interesting to me).

But if you look at the those smaller East Coast schools (even the Deep South schools) you see that they are all from nearby, or least that is how it used to be. For most kids-they want to stay close to home. I never figured that out-when I coached , so many kids would come back after their frosh year and complain about wanting to come home-and some did, but for most it was just a matter of stepping out to the unknown-going to school in another part of the country. I have to think that is a pretty common theme throughout the country, be it West Coast or East Coast-just happens that all the varsity lax programs are in the East.

leaving only the weaker talent to attend schools with club programs.

and the hacks that take out people's ACLs

[Madlax16]

Its all a combination of what every one has said. When i was a senior i didn't know there were more than one club league...i thought the ncll and the mcla were the same thing. Also, coming from the east coast i didn't really want to come west to play and tended to look at the western lax teams as lesser teams. I now know different. The Difference in the talent level of the east coast lax teams like BC and all those others and the west coast is simply this....if you grow up on the east coast and you get an offer to play ncaa ball chances are you will take it. Simply put, at least from the dc area, if you are good enough to play varsity you did, for the most part. The club level was seen as a league for those not good enough to play varsity, for those that dont want to devote the time for a varsity program, or like some of my friends who wanted to play but went to Vtech for engineering instead of a Division school. Also, a few years back college coaches leaned very heavily to only the east coast for recruiting so it was easier for a player to go play in a division than someone of his same talent level out west. The talent level of those in the upper level club teams is great and could most likely send players to the upper divisions, the hard thing is to get the looks when you are that far, and as i believe there is only 1 varsity program in CA (NDNU) and very few in the mid-west. Its just different out here, out near dc kids are given their first pads and stick when they are just entering school. Out here you MAY be lucky enough to find a youth program in many places.