A big year for lacrosse in Baltimore begins to snowball this weekend, as more than 3,000 coaches are in town for the US Lacrosse National Convention.
The men's college season will conclude Memorial Day weekend at Ravens Stadium, where crowds approaching 40,000 will highlight the game's expanding popularity. Its growth has been accompanied by some of the same excesses that led the NCAA to clamp down on major sports, however, and the lacrosse rat race is becoming just as frantic as football and basketball.
With the necessary energy and expenses, coaches can recruit on the road 10 months a year. The work is redundant, leading to the scouting of younger and younger players.
As specialization is sold as the path to scholarships - which number a precious few on the men's side - players and parents reorder lives and discard other activities.
Just as it has done to soccer, there are signs that club lacrosse could trivialize the high school game, as entrepreneurial forces drive what is allegedly done in the name of education.
"Do we really want kids to dedicate their childhood to lacrosse?" said UMBC coach Don Zimmerman. "I'm concerned that lacrosse is going the direction of soccer. America was told that the only way to catch up to Brazil and Germany is to put all of your eggs in the soccer basket, but in lacrosse, we're already at the top of the totem pole. Why? Because our kids play other sports, which makes them better athletes.
"A lot of people are doing this just to keep up with the Joneses. A lot of people are making a lot of money."
Many wouldn't mind cutting back, but not if they have to put their own genie back in the bottle. Last summer, a "recruiting" camp in Baltimore and another in College Park combined to gross more than $1 million in registration fees. Approximately 4,000 boys and girls paid $100 apiece to participate in a local indoor league. Pay-for-play clubs are proliferating, with scholarships the implicit payoff.
There's gold in what used to be a quaint regional game, but it comes at a cost.
On the road ... again
The NCAA allows recruiting coordinator Mike Locksley and other members of the University of Maryland's football staff to recruit off campus 108 days a year, compared to 175 allowed a basketball assistant like the Terps' Dave Dickerson.
Even that restriction pales to the 298 days a year that longtime lacrosse assistant Dave Slafkosky can leave College Park to recruit. That's actually down. Before this school year, lacrosse coaches could be out recruiting all but a handful of "dead" days.
"It's become a quality of life issue," Maryland coach Dave Cottle said. "It's not as difficult on a head coach, but an assistant can be on the road too much, 12 straight weeks in the summer. It's not a great lifestyle."
Stan Ross, who played for Cottle at Loyola College, is an assistant at Towson. Between now and Thanksgiving, there will be months when he sees more of Princeton assistant Dave Metzbower than his girlfriend.
This year he'll follow prospects as they play high school basketball and lacrosse, try out for all-star teams in June and hit the camp circuit in the summer. He'll watch more as their clubs play in the fall and winter, an endless cycle of Turkey Shoots, Champ Camps and 40,000 miles a year on his pickup.
"Last April and May, I saw between five and eight high school games a week," Ross said. "Neither of us made the [NCAA] playoffs, so Cottle and I get in the car and go. You're going the same places, why not ride together?"
Ross often crashes at the home of Ed Stephenson. In a sport dominated by Princeton and Syracuse, the SUNY Binghamton coach is trying to spread the news of his fledgling program, but even he feels the NCAA calendar could be cut.
"We don't need that much time on the road," Stephenson said.
There are additional schedule strains.
Because lacrosse doesn't have a film exchange, it is one of two sports allowed to scout opponents in person. Unlike football and basketball, lacrosse can bring an unlimited number of recruits to campus for official visits. Programs lock up recruits before their senior year, then target boys entering their junior or sophomore years. It's an accepted practice in basketball, but late bloomers are being squeezed out.
"Ten years ago, lacrosse recruiting didn't start until October of a kid's senior year of high school," Ross said. "Now, it's done by then. People who don't know the sport ask what I do outside of our playing season. Ninety percent of my job is recruiting."
Busier generation
Stephenson, an All-American defenseman for Towson in 1989, didn't pick up a stick until he was a sophomore at Dulaney High. Ross played football and basketball for Boys' Latin, but dropped the former when he was a senior in order to get a better handle on his own college choice, a decision that more high schoolers feel forced to make.
Les Matthews has an interesting take on specialization. He was the All-American goalie for Johns Hopkins three decades ago, when the NCAA didn't forbid lacrosse players from helping the Blue Jays' Division III football team and there were none of the year-round opportunities that cram the schedules of his three sons.
Nolan Matthews is a junior goalie at St. Paul's. One weekend last October, he helped the Crusaders beat Cardinal Gibbons in football, then played in the National Fall Ball Recruiting Tournament, which drew 24 teams to St. Paul's. Alex Sahili, one of his two-sport teammates, suffered a mild shoulder separation playing lacrosse and missed the Crusaders' next football game.
There are conflicts aplenty.
"Once the high school season is over, the camps start and run right up to football," said Matthews, the director of orthopedics at Union Memorial Hospital. "Indoor lacrosse gets to be a strain for the younger kids, who aren't able to drive. It's a madhouse out there right now."
Maryland Indoor Lax finishes its 14-game season this weekend. Whereas soccer commands indoor arenas in other regions, the MIL took over Perring Athletic Club and Owings Mills Sports Arena. Children as young as 7 play seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends. Part of the appeal is that there are no practices, standings or playoffs, just games.
Coaches at higher levels have no problem with year-round lacrosse, as long as it doesn't lead to burnout or divert from other activities.
"College coaches want them to play other sports, but kids feel pressure to put them aside," said Bryan Matthews, the former Navy coach who's now the athletic director at Washington College. "They're not making intelligent decisions based on the data that's out there."
Paper chase
Fifty-four colleges sponsor men's Division I lacrosse. Few offer the NCAA maximum of 12.6 scholarships. Another 31 play in Division II, which also offers athletic scholarships.
"Anybody who thinks that lacrosse is going to pay for their kid to go to college is foolish," St. Paul's coach Mitch Whiteley said. "I work in college admissions. Maybe 50 boys a year in the entire country are getting a scholarship worth 50 percent of their college costs."
Whiteley enjoys a break in the summer, but said that last year "I was pressured by our parents to do Champ Camp," so he ran the St. Paul's entry in that 64-team August staple. Owned and operated by Bryan Matthews and G.W. Mix, the local tournament bills itself as the mythical national championship. A month earlier, some of the same boys headed to College Park for Top 205 Camp, which is similarly run by Cottle, Towson's Tony Seaman and Princeton's Bill Tierney.
"It's certainly nice that you make extra money," Tierney said, "but we feel we're providing a pretty good service."
Nike and Adidas fund summer basketball camps on a similar premise. While NBA coaches mingle with college friends and keep lookout for the next LeBron James at one venue, the other is swarming with lacrosse coaches, the majority from non-scholarship Division III.
"Of the 800 kids at our camp last year, 100 to 200 were Division I caliber players," Bryan Matthews said. "Tons of parents and kids aren't coming to camp for the scholarship, but to help their chances of getting into a college. Getting accepted at certain schools is competitive. There are more kids out there than a school can handle, and being recruited by a coach helps you."
Bob Shriver, the longtime coach at Boys' Latin, describes "a pyramid where you keep adding rows of talent at the bottom, but the top, Division I, stays the same size."
Shriver and Whiteley, coaches at established programs with rich legacies, look at their girls' counterparts and shudder. There are 77 Division I programs for women, a byproduct of Title IX. There are more scholarships for girls, more clubs recruiting them to play year-round and more of the extremes that appall the executive director of US Lacrosse, the national governing body.
"This is all fueled by business concerns," Steve Stenersen said. "We're losing our way about what's important in youth sports. It's not about giving a 9-year-old the first building block for a college scholarship, it's about learning how to get along with people of all shapes and sizes.
"There are kickbacks for high school coaches who send their players to certain camps. We are seeing people quit their day jobs to run elite developmental programs that virtually promise that a kid is going to get a scholarship. In a number of cases, I frown on it ethically. I blame parents for swallowing the hook and not being good consumers, but when a sport becomes a product, everyone wants to stick their finger in the pie."