April 30, 2008
by Clare Lochary, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
Georgia State, a Division I public university located in downtown Atlanta, will add women's lacrosse as a varsity sport beginning in 2010.
The Panthers will be the first collegiate institution in Georgia to sponsor Division I lacrosse in either gender. The addition of women's lacrosse came in tandem with the school's April 17 decision to add a Division I-AA football program in the same year. The Panthers plan to hire a lacrosse coach in summer 2009, and the team is slated to play its first Division I schedule in spring 2011.
The NCAA allots a maximum of 12 scholarships to women's lacrosse teams, helping the Panthers to maintain their Title IX compliance after the addition of football. Football teams are allowed a maximum of 63 scholarships; Georgia State plans to offer 30 football scholarships in 2009 and work towards the full complement of awards by 2011.
Besides the gender equity mandate, Georgia State competes in the Colonial Athletic Association, a league that already sponsors eight women's lacrosse teams. The Panthers hope to join the CAA eventually, although they will have to petition for membership, and will likely compete as an independent for a few years.
"The CAA is very strong in women's lacrosse, so it would be a good fit and some good, easy competition, in the sense that everybody knows where each other's campuses are," said assistant athletic director Charlie Taylor.
The burgeoning growth of lacrosse in the Atlanta area also influenced the school's decision.
"The Atlanta market is just blossoming every year. I do think we'll have a natural feeder base, and we won't have to go to, say, New York to recruit," said Taylor.
US Lacrosse currently has 2,475 members in Atlanta alone, and 13,735 members in all of Georgia. A March 15 neutral-site Division I men's lacrosse game between Notre Dame and Dartmouth, the first such game ever played in Georgia, drew 5,180 fans to nearby Lovett School.
Hometown boosterism aside, there is a tenuous lacrosse hotbed connection in the Panthers' decision to go varsity. Georgia State athletic director Mary McElroy is a native of Great Mills, Md., and a 1987 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. McElroy played basketball and softball for the Midshipmen, but her two teenage sons, Darrin and Austin, played high school lacrosse in Atlanta and gave her an up-close look at how the sport has grown in the area.
Georgia State is not the only school south of the Mason-Dixon line to add Division I lacrosse this month. On April 24, Jacksonville University announced its decision to add both men's and women's varsity lacrosse in 2009-2010 school year. The Dolphins' football team plays in the Pioneer League, a conference of Division I schools that do not offer football scholarships, allowing the institution to add men's and women's lacrosse simultaneously without upsetting the gender equity balance.
