Lacrosse at the youth level may be growing astronomically, but at the college level it is stagnating. Up until the past decade, college was the end of the line for lacrosse players. Now, professional leagues, although not quite integrated into the mainstream sports society, act as a stage where college stars such as the Powell brothers of Syracuse or Tillman Johnson of Virginia can carry on the next stage of their lacrosse careers.
While there now are two professional leagues in existence, many fans would argue that college lacrosse is the sport's biggest stage. The crowds in excess of 38,000 that pack the Final Four each May serve as exhibit A for that argument. The ESPN TV cameras that are present don't hurt either.
In NCAA Division I men's lacrosse, there are 56 teams that participate, compared with 118 Division I teams in college football and 326 teams in men's basketball. As for lacrosse, 56 is a number that Virginia coach Dom Starsia does not see increasing.
"Unfortunately, there has not been great growth in Division I," he said. "I'm not really optimistic that that's going to happen in my lifetime. What you're seeing is a bursting at the seams; there are more players than there are spots to play."
The reasoning behind Starsia's waning optimism is that many of the universities interested in adding Division I men's lacrosse teams are burdened by large athletic departments. These programs usually are football and basketball-oriented, allocating the majority of their funding for those two sports. For a smaller sport like lacrosse, the allocation of funds to more popular sports results in less money for scholarships and recruiting. It also means that many programs won't consider adding lacrosse because at most schools, it is a non-revenue sport.
Universities that make up the lower Division levels tend to have smaller student populations as well as smaller athletic departments, meaning they don't have the financial problems associated with football and basketball. Often, smaller athletic departments have a more varied offering of sports as well as the ability to more evenly distribute money to those sports, evidenced by the greater number of schools in the lower divisions that participate.
In Division II, only 30 universities field men's varsity lacrosse teams. The biggest discrepancy, however, exists in Division III, where the number of teams is greater than all those in Divisions I and II combined at 130.
With only four out of 12 ACC universities fielding teams, obviously there is something holding back programs other than a basic lack of interest and funds. The missing piece to the puzzle is Title IX, which requires an athletic department to give an equal number of men's and women's athletic scholarships. Should an athletic department add men's lacrosse as a sport, it must also add a women's sport that uses an equivalent number of scholarships to comply.
Starsia said he believes many ACC schools would be competitive in lacrosse given the opportunity.
"A school like Virginia Tech could be nationally competitive [in lacrosse] in five years," he said. "They're probably not going to get there in baseball. They're not going to get there in some other sports, but they could get there in lacrosse."
The number of Division I programs might not be expanding anytime soon, but one thing that constantly is changing within the game is the increase in talent level. Because of this discrepancy, the disparity in college lacrosse has never been greater than it is this season, with "mid-major" teams like Dartmouth beating ACC powerhouse No. 7 Maryland and Bucknell beating the No. 8 Naval Academy. For coaches, recruiting nets must now extend further away from the East Coast due to the proliferation of the sport in youth leagues.
Starsia notes that while overall the pool of recruits has grown, the number of top players has not.
"There are probably about the same number of truly outstanding candidates as there were," Starsia said. "The competition is really keen at the top for those kids that can really make a difference in your program. It's a little bit more focused than it was in the past."
The college game acts as the next step for the elite players to advance to the professional level but is also the lifeblood of the sport. Should Division I programs continue to disappear or halt expansion all together, the progress of the game and the sport as a whole will be severely damaged.
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