Remote Ambition: Pac-NW Teams Keep Fighting
by Jac Coyne | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff | Coyne Archive | Twitter
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Located 25 miles apart on the outskirts of Portland,
Ore., Linfield and Pacific have developed a friendly, but
competitive rivalry on the women's lacrosse field. Along with Puget
Sound, they are the faces of Pacific Northwest Division III
lacrosse. |
How good would the Salisbury women be if the Gulls were located
closer to Anchorage, Alaska, than to the fertile recruiting grounds
of Maryland?
How many national championship trophies would The College of New
Jersey possess if the Lions' closest non-conference game was in
Iowa?
Welcome to the realities of Division III women's lacrosse in the
Pacific Northwest, where three small colleges are trying to
overcome massive recruiting and travel obstacles to grow the game
in an increasingly bountiful lacrosse area.
It's a day-to-day challenge for Pacific University, Linfield
College and the University of Puget Sound operating in isolation on
the Upper Left Coast, but by tapping into a burgeoning girl's
lacrosse movement in the area and adopting a 'United We Stand'
approach, the three programs are improving.
Not surprisingly, the biggest obstacle facing these teams is
filling out their schedules.
While they are located within a comfortable bus ride of each other
– Pacific (Forest Grove) and Linfield (McMinnville) are
suburbs of Portland, Ore., while Puget Sound is in Tacoma, Wash.
– the next closest opponent is 950 miles away in Los Angeles,
or roughly the distance from Ewing, N.J., to Davenport, Iowa.
Because they are all in the same boat, they try and help each
other.
"We have an agreement that if we get a team to come out here, all
three of us will play that team," said Tim Hart, Linfield's head
coach. "It has worked out really nicely because teams will get
three guaranteed games within three hours of each other."
"I don't lose sleep over Tim's schedule necessarily, but when I
find a team that is interested in coming out, Tim and Liana
[Halstead, UPS' head coach] are the first people I call," said
Wynne Lobel, Pacific's coach. "That works for everybody."
It's not always an easy sell. While many of the other independents
like Dallas, North Central and Birmingham Southern, as well as the
SCIAC teams from Los Angeles, can be lured up to the Pacific
Northwest, it's a little more difficult to get programs from
automatic qualifying conferences Back East to make the trip.
Because of the wider variety of programs available and, currently,
the higher competition level, Florida provides more bang for the
Spring Break buck. The biggest hurdle is the tendency
for East Coast schools to nail down their opponents far in
advance. Some programs schedule several years out, whereas the
Pacific Northwest independents have to work more in the
here-and-now.
"We'd love to play the Hamiltons and Franklin & Marshalls,"
said Hart, "but it's really tough to get on their schedules so many
years in advance."
"The last teams we schedule are each other," said Lobel. "We have
to work around the other teams. When you're growing in
competitiveness, having that element can be a challenge. You hope
teams come, but you can't always leave it up to chance."
That means at least one lengthy spring break trip every year,
sometimes followed by a long-weekend trek to pick up a few more
games. Pacific and Puget Sound both went to California for nine
days and played four games each while Linfield spent five days in
the Midwest playing North Central (Ill.), Carthage (Wis.) and
Adrian (Mich.).
With each trip costing roughly $10,000, according to Hart, the
schools will try to blend both quantity and quality with their
trips, as well as attempt to incorporate an agreement for
reciprocity down the road.
"All three of us have an 'anyone, anytime, anywhere' philosophy,"
said Hart.
The three coaches have a strong rapport with each other, but that
obviously takes a back seat when the three teams are scouring the
region for talent. With much of the girl's prep programs
concentrated along the I-5 corridor stretching from Seattle to
Eugene, which is home to the only other varsity women's
program - Division I University of Oregon - in the
region, all three programs often find themselves fighting for the
same players.
That competition is a positive sign for the area.
While the teams still have an occasional player from the East
Coast, all three programs are sustained primarily by the high
school teams in the region. The presence of Linfield, Puget Sound,
Pacific and Oregon has gone a long way to expose potential players
to the sport and the coaches do their part with local youth and
club programs to keep the growth on an upward arc.
"We're looking to grow the sport and my goal is to get girls to
play lacrosse at the college level," said Hart. "If they play for
me, fantastic, but the more we grow the sport, the better it will
be out here. The more Oregon girls who play high school lacrosse,
the better it is for all of us."
The grass roots approach could have a big impact on the three teams
in the near future as it may entice more schools to adopt the sport
and perhaps even establish an automatic qualifying conference.
The Northwest Conference, of which Linfield, Pacific and UPS are
all traditional members, is rumored to have several other member
institutions on the cusp of adding women's lacrosse. Several more
are said to be in the process of examining their options. Helped by
a strong Women's Division Intercollegiate Associates presence, NWC
schools such as Whitman, George Fox, Pacific Lutheran and Lewis
& Clark would all be viable spots for women's Division III
programs.
And even if the conference didn't get to the magic number of seven
that would make it an AQ league, the double round robin format
would help fill in the schedule and save precious funds for key
road trips.
To foster this possibility, the three established teams are often
willing to provide a helping hand.
"If there is a school that is showing interest, we will do what we
can to involve them," said Lobel. "There was a school that was
interested and we saved a date of competition and agreed to meet
them. You do what you can because it's going to be helpful to
everybody. It's important to build something locally and hopefully
it will happen."
"The reality is we really need a conference," added Hart. "Being an
independent in Division III gets a little crazy."
The odds of a Pacific Northwest team making the national semifinals
in Pennylvania are as long the 2,748 miles they'd have to fly to
get there. But for the three teams toiling by themselves in one
corner of our country, it'll always be the dream.
For the good of the sport, hopefully some day they'll get there.
