Since the Division I NCAA lacrosse championships began in 1971, no team further south than North Carolina, further east than Princeton or further west than Syracuse has ever won the title. In fact, only seven different teams have ever taken the national championship trophy in its 33-year history: the aforementioned three teams, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, Cornell, and Virginia.
Lacrosse actually began in official competition at the collegiate level around the turn of the century, but until just a few years ago, programs in the West had yet to come to fruition. After the sport was featured in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse League was formed the next year. In similar fashion to the modern day, Johns Hopkins University dominated the league, winning the Southern Division four times in a row, and defeating the Northern Division champion three times. Hopkins also represented the United States at an Olympic exhibition event against Canada in 1932, a game which is still remembered for the 80,000 spectators who watched it in Los Angeles. The growth of lacrosse continued steadily, and in 1950 there were 200 college, club and high school teams in the United States.
While the powerhouses of collegiate lacrosse still reside on the eastern seaboard, the sport continues to grow in popularity and spread westward. This past weekend, Virginia competed in the 2004 Pioneer Face-Off Classic held in Denver. While the Cavalier roster includes mostly recruits from the hotbeds of the sport in the Mid-Atlantic and New York, the two western schools in the tournament --Air Force and Denver -- boasted much more geographical diversity on their rosters.
The University of Denver, which hosted the Classic on Saturday and Sunday, boasts players from Colorado, Ohio, Washington, Missouri, Michigan, and Canada. Similarly, Air Force, a military service institution, recruited from around the nation to secure athletes from Utah, Colorado, Arizona and California.
While the strategy of the game has not changed as the sport has expanded westward, the competition has become vastly different.
"I was on the first youth team out here," Pioneer defenseman and Denver native Nathan Jones said. "I started in third grade and played all the way up. I think out here kids are really starting to get looks because the sport really is expanding in high school and even west of here in California, too. It will continue to grow and continue to get more competitive."
Beneath the Rocky Mountains this weekend, the talk of the expansion of lacrosse focused primarily on the development of local youth and high school teams. Primarily in the Mid-West, but also back in the founding land of the East, the sport has become one of the fastest growing in the United States. With this increase in participation comes an escalation in the talent pool available to Division I teams.
"I think that in terms of expansion of the game, it is growing at the high school level probably faster than any other sport in the country," Air Force coach Fred Acee said. "The unfortunate part about that is that a lot of kids aren't going to be able to play at top schools because there is going to be so much competition for those positions because of the lack of matching expansion at the college level."
As top eastern powerhouses such as Virginia and Hopkins pass on some of these new and frequently unknown athletes, the talent strengthens at smaller universities, including those now competing in the sport out West. With the arrival of coaches such as Air Force's Acee and Denver's Jamie Munro to up-and-coming schools, the eastern strategy and tradition of lacrosse expands westward and the athletes continue to become better lacrosse players.
"[A championship] is our goal -- why shouldn't it be?" Munro said. "This is our sixth year of Division I competition, and we're going to get better because our recruiting classes have gotten deeper and deeper."
The 2004 preseason coaches' poll by the Face-Off Yearbook included three mid-western teams -- Notre Dame at No. 16, Ohio State at No. 17 and Denver at No. 23. And with the Pioneers' victory this past weekend against the defending champion Cavaliers, Denver's national ranking can only rise and interest in the area for lacrosse can only continue to grow.
Last Saturday, Virginia was also defeated by unranked Air Force, a mid-level Division I lacrosse team which proved with such an incredible upset that they deserve to be taken seriously in the sport.
"You have to give these people credit here, at the University of Denver and Air Force," Virginia coach Dom Starsia said. "They are putting some resources into the sport in order to have the game grow a little bit. You can see the nice crowd here on a nice day, and who would have thought that a couple years back."
The Cavaliers' two-loss trip to the University of Denver last weekend marked a turning point in the future of collegiate lacrosse. For the first time in the Division I history, NCAA lacrosse teams beyond the powerhouses of the East Coast must be taken seriously as the sport continues to expand to the Mid-West, the Rocky Mountains and beyond.
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