The Precarious Case for Lacrosse

Sports

ThePRECARIOUS CASE for men’s lax

By Jake Miller Assoc. Sports Editor

The choice is simple. Actually, it should not even be a choice. Calling it a “choice” would imply that a decision of some difficulty would have to be made and there is no hiding what should be done. Boston College needs a men’s varsity lacrosse team, which may require scrapping the varsity baseball program.

Through the first 30 games of the 2013 campaign, BC’s varsity baseball team stood at an unimpressive 5-25 overall record to go along with a 0-14 mark in ACC play. While BC athletics boasts strong fall and winter seasons with its football, basketball, and hockey teams, the one thing it has been lacking is a competitive spring team for men’s athletics.

Women’s lacrosse, sailing, and rowing are three especially strong spring programs, but the BC men have struggled to find any sort of rhythm by the time the main quad begins to look green again.

Let us first consider the upside to adding a men’s varsity lacrosse team to the realm of sports at BC. People often speak of Canada as being the breeding place for the best hockey players, and of the western and southern United States as the stomping ground of the best baseball players. Ironically, the hub of lacrosse is the Northeast.

Most of the top-tier, high school lacrosse recruits come 44

out of the New England, Pennsylvania, Long Island, and Maryland area. This belt along the eastern coast of the US produces a vast amount of premier lacrosse talent, and BC is right in the middle of this hot spot. Geography has given BC the inside track on recruiting for lacrosse; we are not taking advantage of it.

Lacrosse has found its roots in the northeastern corridor of the US, with primarily a private, boarding, and preparatory school following. As a result, many of these high school lacrosse players are academically capable of getting into and succeeding at Boston College. These “lax bros” refrain from applying though, because their prospects of playing college lacrosse at BC are, well, subpar with just a club team.

If BC were to form a varsity men’s lacrosse program, they would have the privilege of being slotted into the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), which is the most competitive and nationally renowned college lacrosse league in America.

BC does not even have to build a new complex to house the addition of a lacrosse team because of Alumni Stadium.

Considering the sport’s growing popularity, BC would be able to make some sort of profit by charging admission to home games against some of the best lacrosse programs in the country – which happen to play in the ACC – like Duke, Maryland, and North Carolina.

May 2013

Photos by Alex Krowiak/Gavel Media Image

www.bcgavel.com

whelming and with the exception of freshman Chris Shaw, team leader in home runs and runs batted in, this year’s set of ballplayers does not seem to be righting the ship. If anything, Gambino has done the opposite, and is currently on pace to post the worst record in Boston College baseball history. The team fell one game shy of that dubious statistic last year.

The administration has gotten itself into a bit of a bind.

On the one hand, it has a struggling baseball team, poor

“

Boston College needs a men’s varsity lacrosse team, and that may require scrapping the varsity baseball program.

“

As of right now, though, lacrosse has not found its way onto BC’s list of men’s varsity sports. Pellegrini Diamond at Shea Field is a stark reminder to those who have forgotten why BC cannot support the scholarship load of another varsity program.

The idea of giving up on the sport labeled as “America’s national pastime” does not resonate well with anyone, but it is certainly worth exploring.

Boston College has not always been this bad. From 1998 to 2005, Peter Hughes took the reins of the baseball program and led it to unprecedented success. He averaged over 30 wins per season at BC, after 25 seasons of just 13 wins on average, before leaving to coach at Virginia Tech.

His replacement, Mik Aoki, continued the winning tradition at BC for the next four years, leading BC to its first NCAA Regional since 1967.

Current skipper Mike Gambino was hired when Aoki left in 2010 to coach at Notre Dame, and let us just say that he has not carried on the winning tradition. Gambino entered the 2013 season with a 37-66 record in his first two years at the helm and has done nothing to stop the bleeding. A likable fellow, Gambino reminds us of another, well-liked, Italian coach that took over an athletic program at BC and ran it into the ground. Yes, I am talking about, dare I say it, the Frank Spaziani.

The BC athletic department knew enough to replace “Spaz” with Steve Addazio this past winter in order to foster a winning football culture at BC again. It was proven that Spaziani’s recruiting failures destined the Eagles for a few down years, so he was shown the door and the pressure to choreograph a successful rebuilding plan fell on the shoulders of Addazio. Perhaps talk of dismantling the baseball program at BC is premature and maybe Gambino is really the only thing holding BC baseball back.

His past two draft classes have been largely under-

coaching, poorer hitting, and the poorest pitching in the ACC - a statistical fact. Pellegrini Diamond at Shea Field is a complete mess, its pitiable condition having already been the cause of multiple game postponements. A new coach and better attention paid to recruiting may do the trick, and two years from now, we may no longer be having this conversation.

On the other hand, it has an overachieving lacrosse team to go along with the geographic recruiting advantage, the favorable awaiting league slot and perhaps the in-house players to make the shift from club to varsity successful.

Alumni Stadium already supports the women’s varsity lacrosse team, so why not the men’s too?

The choice comes down to revamping BC baseball or giving up on it all together. While the former seems the more likely, expect the baseball program to be on a short leash and to be the subject of scrutiny for the next few years, because lacrosse is not going anywhere.

45