MN Daily: Minnesota men’s club lacrosse strives for Division I classification

[BleedGopher]

per the Daily:

Lacrosse isn’t just an East Coast thing anymore. It’s all grown up with bags packed, firmly planted in the Midwest.

Minnesota is one of 14 states with at least 10,000 participants at the youth lacrosse level as of 2015, according to US Lacrosse. This kind of participation is forcing universities across the country to ask themselves if their club teams should turn into NCAA Division I teams. That's the exact situation Minnesota has found itself in for years.

“I feel we should be [Division I],” said Minnesota club men's lacrosse head coach Rich Limpert. “The support locally and statewide of both men’s and women’s lacrosse is growing, and we’re one of the fastest growing population of lacrosse playing people in the nation.”

That local support can be seen from everywhere in Minnesota, including Cydne Washington, a parent of a senior lacrosse player at The Blake School.

“I’ve gone from player, to referee, to coach, to parent,” Washington said. “I think Minnesota is at that beautifully ripe place where the sport has the potential to impact not only people who grew up with it here, but also other young people who are going out to the rest of the world.”

http://www.mndaily.com/article/2017/09/mens-club-lacrosse-d1-classification

Go Gophers!!

 

[#2Gopher]

If we add Men's Lacrosse, then we'll have to add a woman's team of sort. We already have rowing that people rarely hear about.

 

[Ski U Mah Gopher]

If we add Men's Lacrosse, then we'll have to add a woman's team of sort. We already have rowing that people rarely hear about.

The logical women's sport would be lacrosse.

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

Presently, there are 70 division 1 men's Lax teams and 112 women's teams.

 

[KillmeNow]

Presently, there are 70 division 1 men's Lax teams and 112 women's teams.

Those numbers dwarf the hockey numbers, at least on the women's side, and 70 is more than 60 on the men's side, and absolutely Lacrosse is going to grow much faster than hockey, if hockey grows at all.

I think we'd be foolish not to figure out a way to make this happen now, instead of later. One of the U's problems over the years has been getting ahead of the game. We got ahead of the game in women's hockey and look at the results!!! Women's BB on the otherhand, in fact ALL women's sports, not counting women's hockey of course, we were not even close to being the first to promote it, invest in it, support it, etc.. And its taken a long time to catch up to the top programs in women's sports in the few sports that we have started to do well in. As well as we have done in Women's VB lately, we are still behind a bunch of schools in historical results. At the rate we are going we should catch up to a lot of programs eventually, but it will be awhile, and other sports like Women's Soccer and Women's BB, we are SO far behind, its embarrassing really, especially with how many great women's bb players that have come through the state of Minnesota and have left to play college ball elsewhere because we had so far acted like we just didn't care about women's athtetics.

So lets not drop the ball and wait until everyone else is established and thriving before we try to start up Lacrosse programs.