UConn Men Lacrosse Title 2021? | The Boneyard

UConn Men Lacrosse Title 2021?

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uconnlax89

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The ADB Mailbag: Should UConn Add Lacrosse? - A Dime Back

First link is the Peter Werth press conference after he donated 22 million dollars. While he was speaking he said Benedict needs to get a D1 mens lacrosse team at UConn. I firmly believe that if we ever got a team we would win a national title within five years of being D1. You can compare it to recruiting in the old big east days. Getting the best players to stay close to home. Anyone else agree? Picture a Saturday night in April in Storrs at the new Morrone Stadium against Cuse. Place could be awesome sight. An additional note the NCAA final four will be in East Hartford in 2021 and 2022. I go to the final four every year, I try my best to rep UConn when I can. Thoughts and or criticisms about this subject?
 
uconnlax89 said:


The ADB Mailbag: Should UConn Add Lacrosse? - A Dime Back

First link is the Peter Werth press conference after he donated 22 million dollars. While he was speaking he said Benedict needs to get a D1 mens lacrosse team at UConn. I firmly believe that if we ever got a team we would win a national title within five years of being D1. You can compare it to recruiting in the old big east days. Getting the best players to stay close to home. Anyone else agree? Picture a Saturday night in April in Storrs at the new Morrone Stadium against Cuse. Place could be awesome sight. An additional note the NCAA final four will be in East Hartford in 2021 and 2022. I go to the final four every year, I try my best to rep UConn when I can. Thoughts and or criticisms about this subject?
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Sounds great. I'm sure lot's of fans and people who are a part of UConn athletics would love to see men's lacrosse get added to the sports mix. I'm certainly one of them.

Of course, the big problem is money. UConn athletics has never exactly been swimming in cash. There are certainly money woes in being a member of the AAC when compared to a P5 conference. Skipping over that little matter, UConn has spent the last 15 years or so struggling to get new facilities added for soccer, baseball, and softball so that the teams involved don't have to play in badly antiquated facilities. Then there is ice hockey, where the men's team joined Hockey East with a proviso that new facilities would be built on campus while UConn played at the XL Center in Hartford. Well, now there is the very real possibility of the antiquated XL Center closing its doors sometime in the very near future, leaving the men's hockey team up the creek in the Freitas ice rink, a facility that doesn't come close to meeting Hockey East standards. If UConn wants to keep men's ice hockey in Hockey East, funding will needed to upgrade to an acceptable on campus ice hockey facility. A proposed men's lacrosse team would have to get in the money line behind all those sports.

One of two things need to happen for UConn to eventually get a D1 men's lacrosse team. One would be for UConn to join a P5 conference, something we've all been waiting for over the last several years. And waiting, and waiting. The other would be for someone with deep pockets (Peter Werth?) to fund all the costs associated with upgrading to D1 lacrosse, including the money needed to take care of women's sports scholarships need for Title IX purposes. A commitment like this would not for one year, it would have to be for every year. UConn athletics has been waiting for a money savior like that for a long time.
 
dbmill said:
The other would be for someone with deep pockets (Peter Werth?) to fund all the costs associated with upgrading to D1 lacrosse, including the money needed to take care of women's sports scholarships need for Title IX purposes. A commitment like this would not for one year, it would have to be for every year. UConn athletics has been waiting for a money savior like that for a long time.
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In the Foundation video - Werth says UConn AD should go to Fairfield County to raise $10-15m from the folks down there to start Lacrosse. Sure didn’t sound like he was going to be the source of any of the funding.

Agree w/ the talent in 90-180 mile radius - UConn can be competitive quickly.
 
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huskymedic said:
In the Foundation video - Werth says UConn AD should go to Fairfield County to raise $10-15m from the folks down there to start Lacrosse. Sure didn’t sound like he was going to be the source of any of the funding.

Agree w/ the talent in 90-180 mile radius - UConn can be competitive quickly.
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Agree with everything you say here. Men's lacrosse is not a sport with lots of big time athletic programs involved, so it would be easier to get to the top.

I listened to the Foundation video about the money after writing my little piece. Yes, Werth did say go to Fairfield County to raise the money. He wasn't volunteering the cash. If only raising 1o-15m were always so easy for UConn athletics.
 
I just do not see it happening in anything like the near-term.

If something changes with the conference affiliation, maybe, but right now, the cash crunch is very., very real.
 
I have discussed lax at UConn with JH, WM and AD David Benedict over the years. All were fully aware of the great potential given the regional strength in high schools and prep schools. They all cited Title IX as the insurmountable hurdle. I've been to lax FF at Rutgers, Balt., Philly and Foxboro - can't wait to see it at the Rent including the 2019 quarterfinals.
 
Major UConn Donor: 'Get a Men’s Lacrosse Program'

Inside Lacrosse brings up how Utah was able to do it. All good points on how it has to happens. It is a little sad that it does hinder on us getting into a P5 conference, and are patience as UConn fans getting into a big conference is wearing thin. Question I ask know is Big Ten or ACC? I know all the hardcore BBALL fans want the ACC because of UConn vs Cuse,Duke and UNC. But from a money standpoint, the Big Ten is a little better cause of the big ten network. The big ten conference in lax is probably just as strong as the ACC. Maryland won last year, Ohio State played in the title game. Don't forget Hopkins and Penn State. Again patience and a lot of money is key.
 
The UConn Blog has plenty of stories on UConn football, basketball, soccer, men's ice hockey, and baseball. It doesn't pay too much attention to other Husky sports, including the NCAA champion field hockey team. Imagine my surprise then when the UConn Blog actually had a link to a story on a college lacrosse website concerning the Peter Werth UConn lacrosse comments.

Onto The Next One: Major UConn Donor Tells School’s AD To Add Men’s Lacrosse
 
Division I Men's Lacrosse At UConn? Not That Simple

>>“It makes a lot of sense for people to ask that question to wonder why we currently don’t sponsor it and if there would be a future plan to compete in men’s lacrosse at the Division I level,” Benedict said. “I think all those things are very rational to be thinking and discussing. At the end of the day, most things can be taken care of with time and money. If we have the time and the money, we could probably find our way to a place where we were competing in Division I lacrosse.”<<

>>“But can you do it? Yes it’s possible to do it. Would there potentially be equity or Title IX issues? Yes there could potentially be those types of things. Right now based on our sponsorship of the programs at UConn, we could not add another men’s or women’s team without adding a similar program of the opposite gender. So in this case, if you’re talking about adding men’s lacrosse program, you would need to add a similar program to match up with it on the women’s side, so yes it can be done. What it comes down to is money and being able to afford to do that. So you have that piece, and you have the general funding piece we would need to address. The state isn’t necessarily increasing their support of UConn right now, so it certainly couldn’t come from a reliance on the university. It would have to come externally.”<<
 
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Unfortunately at the end of the day...to add lacrosse and do it in a way that UConn doesn't have to add another women's sport they need to identify a men's sport that will be replaced by lacrosse. It sucks to even write that sentence suggesting something like that...but that may be the reality of things.
 
Best in State players go to Princeton and Duke. Those without grades go to Bryant. Now, if you can get Pressler as coach...
 
SubbaBub said:
Best in State players go to Princeton and Duke. Those without grades go to Bryant. Now, if you can get Pressler as coach...
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To get Mike Pressler to run the program if one was started would be HUGE. After what happened to him at Duke and the way he has been treated at Bryant..the chances of getting him to UConn would be very slim from the conversations I have had with someone who knows him from Wilton.
 
I don’t understand why you pass on a sport where you could be a real power in favor of sports like golf, tennis and swimming. We need high caliber sports to keep us in the eyes of a P5.
 
SubbaBub said:
Best in State players go to Princeton and Duke. Those without grades go to Bryant. Now, if you can get Pressler as coach...
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Pressler would be a good choice. He knows CT, when he was at Duke he got some guys from CT. Maybe another name you can throw at there is Dom Starsia. If he was willing to come out of retirement. Dave Cottle did just rejoin the Bayhawks as head coach but he could be persuaded with a decent contract. I don't know how much MLL coaches make, but I can imagine a college job pays more. Sadly again as Benedict points out, it will take time and money.
 
gioff23 said:
I don’t understand why you pass on a sport where you could be a real power in favor of sports like golf, tennis and swimming. We need high caliber sports to keep us in the eyes of a P5.
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Men's golf and tennis don't get scholarships at UConn. Swimming has very few to none. In order to offer scholarships for men's lacrosse, we'd have to add women's sports with an equal amount of scholarships. The costs would add up pretty quickly, even if we pulled the plug on golf and tennis.
 
KSC94 said:
Men's golf and tennis don't get scholarships at UConn. Swimming has very few to none. In order to offer scholarships for men's lacrosse, we'd have to add women's sports with an equal amount of scholarships. The costs would add up pretty quickly, even if we pulled the plug on golf and tennis.
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That’s not true on the Men’s golf side - it’s an equivalency sport and I believe the exact number of scholarships allowed by the NCAA is 4-5 and that is split w/ partial scholarships among multiple team members @ UConn.
 
huskymedic said:
That’s not true on the Men’s golf side - it’s an equivalency sport and I believe the exact number of scholarships allowed by the NCAA is 4-5 and that is split among multiple team members.
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The NCAA allows scholarships for golf, but UConn doesn't have to award any, right? In 2014 they didn't include any on their subsidy report.
 
KSC94 said:
The NCAA allows scholarships for golf, but UConn doesn't have to award any, right? In 2014 they didn't include any on their subsidy report.
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They are awarding 8? partial scholarships currently and one or two are also endowed scholarships.
 
FDNY99 said:
Unfortunately at the end of the day...to add lacrosse and do it in a way that UConn doesn't have to add another women's sport they need to identify a men's sport that will be replaced by lacrosse. It sucks to even write that sentence suggesting something like that...but that may be the reality of things.
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FD, hope you had a great holiday.

Actually there is sufficient available capacity (in terms of scholarships and total participation) in existing women's sports (track & field, volleyball, rowing, cross country) that we could add men's lacrosse without sacrificing another men's sport or adding women's sports.

The thing is there would be a substantial cost in coaching (men's lacrosse and possibly additional staff for some existing women's sports), scholarships (male & female) and recruiting (including the needed additional participation in women's sports).

Hathaway didn't have the initiative or imagination to consider something like adding men's lacrosse (unfortunately for us, he was the last AD who reasonably had the opportunity). Significant contributions (sustained six figure donations, earmarked just for this undertaking) will be necessary to pull this off. Adding to this, someone may be willing to earmark donations for men's lacrosse but may not like the idea of their contributions going to add women's rowing scholarships necessary to allow for the men's lacrosse addition.
 
Are people aware the AAC is sponsoring women's lacrosse next year? Teams in the conference would be Cincinnati, Temple, ECU, UConn, Florida, and Vanderbilt. Florida hired Yale's woman's lacrosse coach and they are already trying to win titles. UConn, on the other hand..... Obviously no guaranteed success.
 
Butch said:
Are people aware the AAC is sponsoring women's lacrosse next year? Teams in the conference would be Cincinnati, Temple, ECU, UConn, Florida, and Vanderbilt. Florida hired Yale's woman's lacrosse coach and they are already trying to win titles. UConn, on the other hand..... Obviously no guaranteed success.
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All these schools except for East Carolina have been affiliate members for women's lacrosse in the Big East. East Carolina is forming a women's lacrosse team, so the AAC has now decided to sponsor the sport. So for the 2019 season the AAC teams plus Florida and Vandy are splitting off from the Big East for the new AAC affiliation in women's lacrosse.
 

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