Women's Club Canvas: Ready for a Shootout
by Jac Coyne | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
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The University of California at Santa Barbara will open
its arms to the top WDIA programs in the nation this weekend for
the 21st edition of the Santa Barbara Shootout. |
For updates on the tournament, which has been
revised due to weather, check out Jac Coyne's Santa Barbara Blog.
Look at the preseason WDIA rankings. And now look at what
teams are coming to the Santa Barbara Shootout.
Now you know why this swanky hamlet, located about 100 miles
northwest of Los Angeles, will be the epicenter of the women's club
lacrosse world on the Valentine's Day weekend. Defending champion
and preseason No. 1 Colorado State leads a contingent of 12 ranked
teams headlining the 21st edition of the Shootout.
The schedule for the event is jam-packed on both
Saturday and Sunday with as many as eight different games - ranging
from U-15 club teams to top-drawer WDIA programs - going at the
same time. The Shootout kicks off Friday evening with a round of
games before a battle between No. 4 UCSB and No. 6 Michigan takes
center stage under the lights at Harder Stadium.
The person making this tournament tick is UCSB's Paul Ramsey, who
is in his second stint as the head coach of the Gauchos. Since I'll
be flying in to cover the Shootout this year, I figured I'd check
in with Ramsey and ask him a couple of questions about the
event.
Judging by the amount of teams you have and the various
divisions, preparing for the Shootout looks like it could be a
full-time job. Is this something you do because it helps your
program, or is it a sacrifice of sorts you make for the good of the
WDIA?
Labor of love? Well, some people run tournaments
for profit as their full-time job and do well with it. This
particular tournament just comes with the job description of
getting to coach at UCSB. Honestly though, I do a lot of the
advance work, but the physical part of it and any work once it
starts gets handled by the players and our great team of rec sports
staff here at UCSB.
We're fortunate that rec sports here is a mini athletic
department. Lining the fields, setting up the game day needs
on the fields, keeping water jugs full, sports medicine
coverage and more is all staffed by our department. We
have a full-time trainer, and he has staff. We don't even have
to outsource that. We have a full-time sport club coordinator,
and he has staff. He doesn't have intramural duties or anything
else. It's a great situation.
Does the Shootout sell itself at this point, or do you have
to actively pursue the top teams?
It almost sells itself based on the reputation of our
facilities and the competition the top teams know they will
get. Adding a WDIA division last year and changing the length
of the games so that everything counts on national records has been
a big help. Now all I have to do is spread the word about
that.
Our marketing budget is our overall Web site cost of $95 per
year. That's courtesy of a great Web site template from
laxteams.net. The other part of our budget is my university
e-mail account. That comes with being a part-time staff person
at UCSB. Of course, the team has made it a priority to have a
coach retained at about 50-percent time, so I'm available to help
them with projects like this tournament.
You've got a high school and club component. Is that
something you sought? What was the genesis of adding those
groups?
That is something I'm trying to build. It's
taking longer than the WDIA division, which took one year of
trying. Now I'm on year two trying to get it up to eight
high school teams and eight U-15 teams. We're not quite
there, but I would very much like to have at least four distinct
levels of play all mixing together, walking past each other
and watching each other's games.
The ultimate will be to have enough post-collegiate teams come in
from all over the country that we run a "po-co" championship
division with some real geographic representation. We used to get
teams from Seattle, Philly and Baltimore. One year we had the
Canadian National Team. I'd like to get back to that.
What's the atmosphere like at the Shootout? Is it kind of a
breezy, let's-go-out-and-play-lacrosse type atmosphere, or is there
an edge when the top teams play each other?
It is super-competitive on the field now. For
one thing, we're playing the minimum game time of 25-minute halves,
and teams play only two games a day. It used to be 20-minute halves
and cram five or six games in over the weekend. Now that the
games count on your national record and affect possible at-large
spots for the WDIA National Championship Tournament, while only
having to get mentally psyched for two games, it really lets teams
crank it up.
Do the local merchants/restaurants/etc., get geared up for
the Shootout, and does the community recognize the event, or is it
just a blip on the Santa Barbara consciousness?
Not yet. The business used to really get involved
when I ran this event back in the 90's (1990 -
1997). Then I left here to pursue opportunities elsewhere,
first at Holy Cross and then at Hofstra, and all those
relationships were lost. The first group I got involved with
when I got back was the hotels, since it takes five or six hotels
to house everyone. That, though, results in a lower room rate
for the teams and a scant five comp rooms for me to use to house
officials. Helpful, yes, but only the tip of what we should
be realizing with 51 teams here in town.
We need a "where to eat" guide that restaurants buy
into. Maybe that's cash, or maybe it's team meals for later in
the season. We need a car rental agency to refer teams to for
vans, and then that agency helps us out with a percentage or
something. I'd like to get someone in the Santa Barbara
Chamber of Commerce involved, because that's someone who already
has contacts and could estimate the dollar value of bringing 51
teams into town. It has to be a six-figure amount, but the
time in the day for me to delve into that just isn't there right
now. Thank goodness we get the support we do from Brine for balls
and nets. That helps us until we can get some groundswell
going with the local businesses.
Is it a relief of sorts when the event is done, or is
exciting to have all the activity?
I really like walking around and networking with the
coaches on different fields and seeing eight fields of lacrosse
being played at a time, parents lining the sidelines to
support their daughters, officials going for their
district rating, and teams cheering for a great play by their
teammate. Camaraderie is the one-word term for it.
However, when the last game is over and there is light at the end
of the tunnel for the last goal getting put away and the last
piece of trash picked up and, then, when I get home and pass
out....well there is not much more relief felt than that.
Can you remember a funny story from one of the past
Shootouts that kind of sums up what the weekend is about?
We used to put everyone up. At the time that the
Shootout was only about a dozen teams, they would all
arrive sometime Friday evening and hosts had been pre-arranged
to house sometimes up to eight or nine guests. Everyone
brought sleeping bags to scatter all over Isla Vista (college town
next to UCSB) and sleep on floors, couches, whatever. It
created friendships and social situations that we don't get
anymore. Wait...I don't think I should relay this
story. No, nothing memorable I can pass on. It's all
been good times, though. I can tell you that.
