Three games, top teams, big venue, Jersey swamps and lots of empty seats

You got beef? Fitting for the New Jersey Classic

This weekend will bring us yet another triple-header lacrosse showcase as the New Meadowlands Stadium located in luxurious East Rutherford, New Jersey will play host to the 3rd Annual Konica Minolta Big City Classic. With the likes of Johns Hopkins, Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse on the ticket, the all-day experience is sure to showcase plenty of great lacrosse action and lots of empty seats. That's right, empty seats. This is a sore subject for me since I am usually a glass-is-half-full kinda guy when it comes to promoting my favorite past-time, lacrosse. But there is something about college lacrosse being played in NFL stadiums that leaves me feeling a bit cynical.

It's like when Harry Callahan says to Lieutenant Briggs at the end of Magnum Force, "A man's got to know his limitations". The same could be said for lacrosse. Know the limits of your product and realize the extent of your fan base. Does the NCAA expect to fill the Meadowlands or M&T Bank Stadium for any of these non-championship events? Lets just stick with the numbers for a the moment. Last year's Minolta Classic sold 25,742 tickets. I'll admit that's amazing for three college lacrosse games, but that stadium holds 82,000 people. Based on the calculator that Microsoft so graciously included on my machine, that means that 70% of the stadium was empty. On ESPN, where most of us will see these games, the attendance looks even lower due to the enormity of these venues and the massive blocks of empty colored seats. It literally looks like a few thousand people turned out for these games. I think that makes us (the lax community) look like small frogs in a big pond.

The 2010 crowd was deemed a success.

There is also something special about being on a college campus to watch an athletic event that you don't get at a neutral professional site. You might not get this, especially if you actually went to college. This is probably because I never made it past JUCO and I like to fantasize that I am a student as I walk from my dented Corolla to the stadium box office to beg for the student discount since I have mysteriously lost my college ID.

Look, I'm all for the expansion of the sport of lacrosse but what I'm not in favor of is rushing it's growth or trying to shove it down peoples' throats. The growth of lacrosse will happen naturally, I assure you. It has to, its just too good of a product. There may come a time when stadiums of this size are necessary to provide seating for 80,00 paying lacrosse fans but I don't think we are quite there yet. I say let's leave the NFL stadiums for who they were intended for, the NFL, Gwar and monster truck shows.

Okay, so I must admit that this is more of a rant then a blog, so go ahead and let me know what all 476 of you think. Oh wait, that's my reader count from my other blog about wedding cakes. But seriously, I am interested in your opinion on this. Does this help the sport of lacrosse grow or does it simply give all of us a feeling of legitimacy because we get to play our little sport where the big boys play?

Get some wood! The return of the wooden lacrosse stick?

Somewhere between your electric bill and your auto insurance payment. That's what you can expect to pay for a top-of-the-line titanium lacrosse shaft these days (and that's for a short stick). It's really hard to believe. I know that metal is a commodity and therefore the pricing can fluctuate depending on whatever economic wave we happen to be riding but since there aren't any land wars taking place in the Middle East over enriched aluminum fields I cant really explain why these sticks are so pricey. Its probably because they have to fork out big bucks to some marketing genius to come up with ominous sounding names for their shafts like the "Krypto Element", the "Swizzbeat" and wait for it....the "Wonder Boy". My apologies to Roy Hobbs for that one. Well, having the lives of several helpless little humans to take care of keeps me from coughing up that kinda dough for anything that doesn't have blinking lights or can't keep my drinks cold.

Enter Phil Czarnecki and Mike Ruka, creators and owners of Blue Magic Lacrosse. These two Winona State University students have reached back in time from a rented house on their Minnesota campus to bring us a new and improved version of the wooden shafts that so many of us used back in high school. No, that's not a typo - I said wooden shafts! If I remember correctly 7 of the 10 starters on my high school team used wooden shafts screwed to plastic heads. Johns Hopkins All-American and personal hero of mine, Brian Wood had a wooden shaft attached his STX-SAM and I have the posters to prove it. Cue the violins and fetch me my pudding and geriatric medication now please.

Blue Magic Lacrosse started in August of 2010 when these high school friends began to discuss what all college juniors begin to discuss - how to make money! Phil, who plays for the Winona U. club team has been playing lacrosse since his freshmen year. Mike is the craftsman, forging the shafts out of sheer will (Red Oak and Pine actually) and the carpentry skills he was taught since childhood. Plus, I believe his dad has the ultimate set of tools. Together they offer wooden shafts at a fraction of the cost for what you might pay for even a used titanium shaft these days.

The shafts are made right in their garage and can usually be completed in about 30 minutes. According to co-founder Mike Rika, making a wooden lacrosse shaft is much easier to make then most players would expect.  I made nun-chucks out of a broom handle when I was twelve and they turned out pretty well but don't expect me to open an on-line Martial Arts store anytime soon. I'll leave the carpentry work to the skilled professionals.

Where's Blarney Green?

In just a few months of operation, Blue Magic Lacrosse is already approaching its 100th custom shaft and they've shipped  to customers as far away as Poland. The stick can be dyed in various colors and are extremely affordable, with an attack stick costing $20 and a defensive pole running around $45. Other reviews online have confirmed that the Blue Magic shafts are much lighter then the wooden shafts of old (such as the Crooked Arrow, remember that tree trunk?) but still offer that heavy check feel and a slight natural flex when you really let er' rip. Players with hard shots will have to confirm that as I am not physically capable.

So, can wooden shafts make a comeback in the highly competitive lacrosse equipment market of 2011? Two fired up college students from Minnesota think so. Check out their site, email them or hit 'em up on Facebook. They're excited to tell you about their product. For me, I have a few broom handles down in my basement and hack saw to attend to.

Email Blue Magic Lacrosse or find them on Facebook.

Got a problem with Petro and his boring team? Go watch wrestling.

I'm enjoying the outrage that is being posted all over the internets this evening regarding the lack of a shot clock in college lacrosse. Apparently several dozen people in a certain area of up-state New York were unsatisfied with the measly nine goals that were scored during the Johns Hopkins-Syracuse game (SU prevailed 5-4 in double OT). Immediately following Stephen Keogh's goal at the 3:45 mark of the second overtime, the web became a buzz with angry lax fans lobbing hail size balls of hate at Johns Hopkins coach Dave Petriamala for his conservative offensive game plan which kept the scoring low and the game close.

I guess there are certain facts about these two teams that slipped the minds of these lax fans while the game was being played. For one, Syracuse is the number one team in the country and entered the game undefeated at 5-0. The Orangemen were also enjoying home field advantage inside the Carrier Dome, where they have only lost a few times since the dome was constructed in 1789. (Sorry, but that place is a dump). Johns Hopkins on the other hand entered this contest ranked #13 (or #9, depending on which poll you choose) and although they held a record of 5-1, they had yet to play a top ten team. In addition to their weak schedule, 8 of the Blue Jays starting 10 players are sophomores or freshman.

The way I see this, coach Petriamala had very few choices. Slowing the game down and not allowing the uber talented Orangemen to dictate the tempo in their home stadium seems like head coaching 101 to me. But you see this is 2011, and we live in the world of "entertain me with lots of action regardless of its purpose or I'll go elsewhere" kind of fans. One fan actually stated that he was so overcome with boredom that he turned the game off to watch college wrestling on another network. College wrestling instead of a prime time, nationaly televised contest between lacrosse's two most storied programs (and its a tie game late in the forth quarter)? Go ahead buddy, by all means change that channel. You are obviously not a lacrosse fan. I'd gather that you aren't much of a sports fan either. You probabaly turned the dial to "Minute to Win It" or some other mediocare prime time game show that has plenty of lights and flashy hosts that can stilumate the minimal synnapses in your tiny brain.

Coach Petro. Didn't want to shoot from x or outside the box.

You see friends, unlike basketball, where at 90% of the time someone is within shooting range, lacrosse is played on a large field, and unlike basketball there is always one defensive player unobtrusively guarding the goal. That means that working for a quality shot in lacrosse can take time, especially against a superior opponent. In basketball a shot taken to avoid a clock violation has a decent chance of going in, or at the very least can be rebounded by another offensive player. A shot taken in lacrosse to avoid this same violation will most likely be caught by the goalie and will equate to an unforced turnover.

Dude, you're in range, shoot it!

Forcing shots in lacrosse does nothing but artificially hasten a sport that is already designed to be fast. Don't agree? Then I would suggest that you check out the next MLL game that you can find. Go watch a few quarters of that mess and then let me know the offensive game plan of either team. And please don't try to compare NCAA Lacrosse with this pro league either. The MLL is basically an 8 team all-star league (wait, the league shrunk to 6 teams while I was writing this, Newport News ans Punxsutawney have folded).The offensive players on the pro teams can create offense on their own with very little coaching or game planning. Go tell the head coach at Holy Cross to implement that strategy the next time they play Virginia. I'm sure it will work out well for them.

Want to speed up the NCAA game? Eliminate the horn. Make all substitutions on the fly. Still not fast enough for ya? Eliminate the long pole middie. Still not fast enough? Go watch college wrestling. There, I just fixed lacrosse for all of you SU fans. Now go score 32 goals on Hobart and enjoy your teams success.

So the NLL is turning 25. Who knew?

So, I just read somewhere that the National Lacrosse League will soon embark on its silver anniversary season. Congrats to the league and their fan base, wherever they may be. As a native Baltimoreian and a resident of one of the meccas of the lacrosse world, I can honestly say I had no idea this milestone was about to be be achieved. The NLL, which was founded in 1987 as the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League, maintains the majority of  its following these days far from the traditional field game and more in the land of Labbats Blue and Terrance and Phillipe.

I recall attending the very first game of the Eagle League way back in 1987. At that time it was the Baltimore Thunder and the Washington Wave playing at the old Washington Capitol Center. I was a strapping sixteen year old with dreams of lacrosse glory and I have to admit at that time indoor lacrosse was really cool and exciting. Lacrosse was hard to come by those days if you didn't live near a college campus. Lets face it, there was one lacrosse game on TV every year and that was usually broadcast on tape delay at 3:00 in the morning. Any new outlet for lacrosse, even a violent indoor version, was a step in the right direction in terms of expanding the sport. Television commercials for the Eagle League glorified the violence and promoted the object of the game as to "not only win, but survive". Worked for me. Guys with lax sticks on TV clubbing each other? I could get into that.

Rick Sowell in the early days of the Baltimore Thunder

As the field game progressed and innovations in equipment made everyone a Stan Cockerton (if you are under 40 you will have no idea who I am talking about) the NLL was pushed off onto more and more cities with a spirited fan base (aka thirst for violence) and less admiration for the beauty of the field game. Indoor teams that had to compete with the growing outdoor market were relocated to new cities where lax was more of a novelty. Of course, most of the league now resides in Canada where the indoor game was created in 1931. I guess you can go home after all and I say good for the league and good for the Canadians. They are a good fit for one another. It gives hockey fans something to cheer about during the 3 month NHL off-season.

Unfortunately, I lost total interest in indoor lacrosse probably around 1989, when (ironically) a young Canadian chap decided that he could dunk a lacrosse ball from behind the goal. That was it for indoor as far as I, and most of the country was concerned. Field lacrosse had its Michael Jordan and the outdoor game would never be the same. At some point shortly after wards, all of the NLL teams moved out of the Baltimore -DC market for good, without anyone even noticing.

The NLL as it looks today

So lets all raise an ice cold Elsinore to the NLL for keeping it gong for so long without a TV deal (VS Network doesn't count) or much of an American patronage. Any lacrosse league that can last for so long deserves as much.