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GWLL Swan Song Underscores Missing Link

by Daniel Malloy | Special to Lacrosse Magazine Online

Quinnipiac head coach Eric Fekete says the lack of administrative presence in the GWLL helped form a unique bond among him and conference colleagues. The Bobcats are the No. 4 seed in this weekend's GWLL tournament -- the last for the conference, which will disband after 16 years.

Commissioner of the Great Western Lacrosse League sounds like a fairly prestigious gig, but Ron Grahame insists that it isn't much.

The GWLL doesn't have a league office, a sports information staff or even an active Web site. The commissionership rotates among administrators from the different league schools, this year falling to Grahame, senior associate athletic director at Denver.

"All I'm really doing is coordinating it from an administrative perspective," said Grahame, who inherited the title from Quinnipiac Athletic Director Jack McDonald.

This weekend Grahame will coordinate the second -- and final -- GWLL tournament in Birmingham, Mich. Next year five of the league's teams (Denver, Air Force, Bellarmine, Ohio State and Quinnipiac) will move to the Eastern College Athletic Conference, while Notre Dame will move to the Big East -- which will sponsor men's lacrosse for the first time.

Both leagues will have a bona fide office and administration, but the teams will lose something in the transition, said Quinnipiac head coach Eric Fekete. Without much administrative supervision, the coaches get together to iron out scheduling and rules, among other nuances.

"It's great because you know that you're dealing with other people who understand the specifics of your situation," said Fekete, whose team will continue the conference musical chairs by jumping from the ECAC to the new Northeast Conference in 2011.

"We're all competitive, but we're all allies in some way. That's one of the best parts of this whole league."

When Quinnipiac joined the GWLL in 2006, Fekete already knew the landscape. He was an assistant coach at Fairfield when the Stags played in the league (they left in 2005). Quinnipiac came from the America East, a much more structured environment where Fekete said he interacted less with the coaches.

Now, based on working so closely together, Fekete said he counts his conference coaching foes among his close friends. Their biggest accomplishment, he said, was creating the GWLL tournament, which was played for the first time last year.

Fekete credited the extra competition and exposure the tournament brought with getting the GWLL three bids to the NCAA tournament, as Notre Dame, Ohio State and Denver all earned spots. He also said getting to the tournament -- which the Bobcats clinched with a comeback win against Bellarmine on Saturday -- has been a major motivator for his team.

For the coaches, the competition outweighed everything else -- including the concerns of administrators.

"Like most administrators, we were looking at the bottom line, and there's an extra cost there," Grahame said. "But it's the right thing to do and it gives, in our case, the top four teams the chance to play in a tournament setting."

The league has had many incarnations -- Michigan State and Butler, which have since dropped their programs, were among the charter members in 1994 -- but it has always had its heart in the Midwest. The two Colorado teams, Denver and Air Force, remain the westernmost teams in Division I.

Grahame said it will be odd to move to a league with "East" in its name, but there isn't much of an alternative. In addition to Quinnipiac (Connecticut), the ECAC will include East Coast squads Fairfield (Connecticut), Hobart (New York) and Loyola (Maryland).

"I wish we had a western component to lacrosse and, who knows, maybe that will change here in the future," Grahame said. "But in order to be really successful and to survive, you have to be a part of a conference."