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US Lacrosse College Notebook
Feb. 21, 2003
“70 and Dry”
For the second straight weekend, weather will be the featured attraction
for most of the varsity lacrosse world. With heavy rains forecast
and snow still piled up at many playing venues, there will be a
slew of scheduling changes. But in State College, Pa., Penn State
head coach Glenn Thiel says it will be “70 and dry” for
an early season men's showdown between the Nittany Lions and Notre
Dame on Sunday.
The game will be played indoors at Penn State's Holuba Hall, a
118,000 square foot artificial turf field that is one of the largest
indoor facilities in the nation.
“We're the lucky ones,” said Thiel, who says there is
still about a foot of snow on the ground. “We've had people
contacting us about bringing scrimmages here, but the problem is
with our own university it's tied up with practices starting at
5:45 in the morning up until midnight.”
This preseason has been an especially rough one for many teams
due to cold weather and frequent snow showers.
“We were outside two times late in January,” said Thiel.
“Last year we were out the whole time. It was beautiful. We've
been so spoiled the last five or six years. We forget this is Pennsylvania
and it's February. We've got no business playing lacrosse now. We
shouldn't be scheduling games until March 30, but the school calendars
have changed and we've made it into a winter sport.”
But with the benefit of Holuba Hall, his team will be prepared.
“It's a full field, so you can do everything to get ready to
play.”
Penn State, which features All-American longstick middie Rob Bateman
and a great goalie in senior Chris Garrity, has high hopes for its
first NCAA tournament berth after last year's 8-5 season that included
a season-ending win over Virginia.
Notre Dame, which also has an indoor facility, went 5-8 last season,
one year after its trip to the NCAA semifinals. The Irish were young
last year and lost five one-goal games, but still managed to earn
a share of the Great Western Lacrosse League title. One of those
losses was last year's 10-9 overtime setback to Penn State in the
season opener.
Around the Country
Games
on the Move
Poor weather and field conditions have stripped Lynchburg
of its men’s home game against Ohio Wesleyan. The Hornets and
the Battling Bishops, winners of the last three games in the series,
will instead open their respective seasons in Charlottesville, Va.,
at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the University of Virginia’s turf field.
Lynchburg hasn’t beaten OWU since its 1999 NCAA tournament
season, and the Hornets will try to erase some painful memories
of last year’s visit to Delaware, Ohio, where the Bishops scored
four goals in the game’s final 1:32 to wipe out a 14-11 deficit
and win, 15-14. Lynchburg’s high-powered attack of Kevin Reinecke
(42 goals, 8 assists in 2002), Billy McCulloch (40-12), and Brandon
Childs (25-31) staked the Hornets to leads of 12-4 and 14-9, before
OWU’s Andy Rowe (44-8) scored three straight as part of the
game-clinching, 6-0 run, the winner coming at :08. The Hornets’
trio returns and will be countered by a Bishop offense that led
Division III in scoring with better than 16 goals per game last
year. Sunday’s game is the first of five straight on the road
for OWU.
Other games that have been moved in one way or another because
of weather and field conditions:
Mount St. Mary’s men’s game at UMBC today has moved to
Homewood Field on the Johns Hopkins University campus. Admission
is free and faceoff is 7 p.m. The Mountaineer women, scheduled to
open at home tomorrow against Lehigh, will instead travel to Bethlehem,
Pa., to play the Mountain Hawks at 4 p.m.
Towson and Rutgers, meeting in their men’s season openers
for the second straight year, will play at 1 p.m. Sunday in Towson,
Md., back a day from the original Saturday game date.
New Digs
The Towson/Rutgers game will be the first at newly-renovated Minnegan
Field at Towson Stadium. The facility, formerly known as Minnegan
Stadium with 5,000 seats on one side of the field, has undergone
a two-year, $31.5 million upgrade to now seat 11,000. Permanent
seating lines both sides of the field, and a new press box and field
house have been added. Towson will host an NCAA tournament quarterfinal
doubleheader on May 18.
Stony Brook opened brand new Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium in the
2002 football season, and the Sea Wolves lacrosse teams will inaugurate
the 8,000-seat facility during the first week of March. The Stony
Brook men will welcome high-profile opponents Maryland, Navy and
North Carolina during 2003.
Gettysburg's March 8 home game against Washington and Lee has been
moved to the Generals' home field in Lexington, Va., because renovations
to the field at Musselman Stadium are not complete. The natural
grass is being upgraded to the state-of-the-art in-fill synthetic
grass surface AstroPlay by Southwest Industries.
New Hampshire’s women’s team will play on a new $1.5
million artificial turf surface at Memorial Field. The Wildcats
open 2003 with three games on the road before hosting Yale on March
5.
Heading West
New Hampshire, a title contender in the America East Conference
behind league coach of the year Sandy Bridgeman and IWLCA/US Lacrosse
All-American Jessie Groszkowski (school record 60 goals last year),
makes a cross-country trip to kick off 2003. The Wildcats, regular
season conference champions, play at Stanford Saturday and Cal-Berkeley
Sunday.
Off the Back
St. Mary's (Calif.) women opened their season with a 7-5 victory
over Cal-Berkeley on Thursday. It was the Gaels’ first victory
ever over the Bears in seven games.
US Lacrosse College Notebook is a weekly feature on the US Lacrosse
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