LAXFU Lacrosse News Blog

Steele Stanwick was one of the best team players in college lacrosse this season.  But was he the best player?  Many would argue Rob Pannell was the best in the league, and we’d tend to agree.  Regardless, Stanwick earned the award, and it’s great to see him and Virginia getting rewarded for persevering over the last two seasons in the face of numerous obstacles.   And perhaps best of all, Steele was only a junior, so we get to see him play again next season!  Congrats to Steele Stanwick (who has one of the best names in lacrosse).

Past Tewaaraton Award Recipients

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Virginia junior attackman Steele Stanwick has become the third Cavalier to win the coveted Tewaaraton Trophy, awarded to the top male collegiate lacrosse player, announced by the Greater Washington Alliance on Thursday night inside Washington D.C.’s Warner Theatre.

“This award means a great deal to me,” said Stanwick. “This is something I have been dreaming about since I was young. I am really humbled by the honor and I wouldn’t be here without my teammates.”

Stanwick (Baltimore, Md.) joins Chris Rotelli (2003) and Matt Ward (2006) as Virginia Cavaliers who have won college lacrosse’s top honor. All three of UVa’s Tewaaraton Trophy winners earned the award in a season they led the Cavaliers to a NCAA title.

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Another NCAA men’s lacrosse championship is in the books.  2011 marked the ninth consecutive year that the championship was played in an NFL stadium.  Since making the move to the big venues, it appeared that attendance was justifying it.  With the booming growth of lacrosse across the country, you would think the attendance at games would also be on the rise.  However, this past Memorial Day weekend, we saw attendance for the championship drop back to levels it was at almost decade ago.

NCAA Lacrosse Championship Attendance is Trending Down

In 2007 Baltimore broke the record for NCAA lacrosse attendance.  Things were looking up, and Gillette Stadium got into the mix and booked the 2008 and 2009 championship weekend.  Attendence in New England was equally impressive, with two back-to-back Syracuse championships brining in close to a quarter million fans over the ’08-’09 period.

If lacrosse is growing, then why isn’t the attendance?

There are a few theories out there trying to account for the reasons why attendance is down.  When considering 2011′s big drop, here are a few potential contributing factors:

• The CNY Factor: There were no Central New York teams in the finals for the first time in recent memory (including the DIII finals, which are played on Saturday in between the D1 games).  CNY is known for hardcore lax fans that always make the journey to support their teams, and more often than not there are multiple Syracuse-area teams in the finals (Syracuse, Cornell, Cortland, LeMoyne, etc…).

• New Time Slot: This year was the second time the NCAA played the championship game at 3:30pm, rather than the traditional 1pm.  Holiday travelers don’t like getting a late start when dealing with Memorial Day traffic in the northeast.  The game was moved to 3:30pm to appease the EPSN gods, who wanted better ratings for their TV coverage.

• TV Coverage: Now that ESPN is covering lacrosse all season long, fans may be getting accustomed to watching games in HD at home.  In years past, the only way to get a glimpse of great lacrosse was to journey out to the stadium.

• Ticket Prices: Bigger venues mean higher ticket prices.  For the casual fan that doesn’t have a dog in the race, can we expect them to shell out up to $85 ticket to bring the whole family to the game?

• Location:  Since returning to Baltimore, attendance has dropped off, leaving some wondering if Baltimore is still the lacrosse capital it once was. Is it time for the finals to be moved to New York or New Jersey?

TOWSON, Md.– A highly-decorated and respected collegiate and professional player and current Associate Head Coach at Towson University, Shawn Nadelen has been tabbed to take over the Tiger men’s lacrosse program, Director of Athletics Mike Waddell and Interim President Marcia G. Welsh announced Sunday.

“Shawn’s championship experience at the collegiate, professional and international levels as both a player and a coach make him the ideal leader for Towson Lacrosse,” Waddell says. “When you look in his eyes, there is the intensity of a CHAMPION and a resolve which will bring the most out of our student-athletes on and off the field. He is the perfect choice to continue the coaching legacies of Carl Runk and Tony Seaman.”

“While at Towson, Shawn has solidified himself as part of the collegiate lacrosse landscape here in Baltimore and across the county as this sport continues to expand from coast to coast,” Waddell added. “As someone who is still active as an athlete, Shawn has great name recognition with the lacrosse community. We look forward to keeping him and his wife, Mary, a professor at Towson, here as key members of our Tiger family.”

Nadelen just completed his seventh season at Towson and his second at the team’s associate head coach and defensive coordinator. Since Nadelen arrived at Towson in 2004, he has sparked a defensive resurgence in which the Tigers have allowed an average of nine or fewer goals four times and finished among the nation’s top 20 defenses twice, including this year when the Tigers allowed 8.23 goals per game. (more…)

BALTIMORE, Md. – Colin Briggs scored five goals and was named the Most Outstanding Player as the No. 7 seed Virginia Cavaliers (13-5) put their stamp on the program’s fifth NCAA National Championship with a 9-7 triumph over the unseeded Maryland Terrapins (13-5) on Monday afternoon, in front of 35,661 fans inside M&T Bank Stadium.

Virginia became the lowest seed (No. 7) and first five-loss team to win a men’s lacrosse national championship. The ACC now has 12 all-time NCAA titles, the most of any conference. Virginia now has won NCAA titles in 1972, 1999, 2003, 2006 and 2011.

“The fact that we are here right now is a credit to the team and my family and the people at Virginia,” said Virginia head coach Dom Starsia. “We had to reconfigure ourselves midway through the season – they had to decide that it was important enough to pick themselves up and get going again. The game today epitomized the kind of season that we’ve had – that we have started out well – put some goals in the second quarter when we got ahead a little bit and gave us some confidence going into the locker room. I am very proud of these guys and what they have done.”

UVa goalie Adam Ghitelman concludes his career with 50 career wins in between the pipes and No. 3 all-time among NCAA Division I goalies. Ghitelman finishes his career with 586 career saves, good for No. 2 all-time in the UVa annals.

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ANN ARBOR – University of Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon announced today (May 25) the elevation of men’s and women’s lacrosse to varsity status. The men’s program will begin NCAA-Division I varsity competition in the 2011-12 academic year and the women’s program will be ready for NCAA-Division I varsity competition in the 2012-13 academic year.

“Our department has carefully considered the elevation of lacrosse to varsity status and we feel the time is right to make this move,” said Brandon. “The men’s program is further developed based on their history of success in the club-varsity system. We plan to build upon that success at the next level. Our women’s program will require more time to build, but I am confident within a reasonable timeframe we will become competitive nationally in women’s lacrosse.”

Michigan is the first Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conference school to add men’s lacrosse since Notre Dame added the sport in 1980 and started competition in 1981. Michigan will join Ohio State and Penn State as the only schools in the Big Ten Conference to sponsor men’s lacrosse. (more…)

Someone wake me up… I fell asleep during the Maryland/Syracuse game in Foxboro.  There were 11 stall warnings against Maryland, and there probably should have been 50.  Someone please add the shot clock before it becomes the slowest game on two feet.  Congrats to Maryland for knocking of the top seed, but I’m not sure how good a team can feel about playing that style of lacrosse.  Syracuse should also be questioning their approach, as they didn’t seem to mind playing in slow motion.

For the sake of the game, let’s hope the teams actually play transition lacrosse in Baltimore before ESPN cancels their coverage.

Denver and Virginia both put on great shows this weekend.  Virginia looked more than questionable throughout the season, but came ready to play as they steamrolled Cornell (without the Bratton brothers).   Denver is is firing on all cylinders at the perfect time.  They controlled a very powerful Hopkins team in the semifinals, without taking the air out of the ball.

Maryland looked dominant in the first round of the NCAA tourney.  The Terps took out a very strong UNC team with a convincing 13-6 victory.   The score was 8-5 Maryland when Terrapin seniors Grant Catalino (attack) and Brian Ferrel (defenseman) pulled off the “hidden ball trick”.

It’s one of the ‘timeless classic’ plays in lacrosse where one player pretends to flip the ball to a teammate, while blocking the view of the defense with his body.  The player without the ball then cradles hard and drives to one side to distract the goalie and defense, while the guy with the ball casually peels off down the opposite side towards an open net.

This was a perfect execution of the play, but shame on UNC for falling asleep in what was their biggest game of the year.

Maryland Lacrosse: Hidden Ball Trick Video