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2010 Mardi Gras Lacrosse Tournament

Straight off the block with it, Royal Street to be specific.

On Friday morning I’ll head down to the Big Easy for the 2010 Mardi Gras Lacrosse Tournament.  I’m excited to play with my brother again (I think the last time that happened, we were in HS) and the combination of 2 Wilson brothers on defense should result in some hysterical situations.

I’m looking forward to the beer truck that will be at the tournament, and I’m loving the fact that I’m learning new things everyday such as the term, Mardi Gras, literally translating as Fat Tuesday from super-sexy French to ugly-germanic English.  In the Catholic faith, the day is also known as Shrove Tuesday. Neat-O.  Now I get it!

As promised in yesterday’s post, I’m revealing the final result of my New Orleans Lacrosse Club/Mardi Gras dye.  As with many of my dye jobs, it isn’t groundbreaking or really that hard… it’s simple and sweet in style and in my opinion, you can clearly tell that I did it.  That’s really all I can ask for.

NOLC lacrosse stick dye job
The mesh color is off and it’s way too hard. White MarcMesh here I come!
NOLC lacrosse stick dye job
Simple but effective. Note the Catfish to celebrate NO’s brackish wildlife.

The Viper 2 from STX is a solid stick by the way and pretty cheap.  Expect a full review some time this week or next for that and other products.  412 and I will be reviewing as much as we can in the coming weeks to keep you all educated about the hottest gear.

I have no idea if the below featured shooting shirts from Elevation Lacrosse will be our jerseys down in New Orleans but I definitely hope they are… even though the craw-dad looks more like a lobster… then again, I “summer” in Maine so that’s fine.

Lobsters and lacrosse. That’s what Louisiana DOES! If Maryland can claim football, LA can have lax.

I love tournament.  I love gear.  I also love Division 3 NCAA lacrosse, probably because that’s where I played in college. duh.  I’m lucky that I get to participate in a poll for D3 lax on laxpower.com and now I’m also posting my calls here on LAS.  You can check that out here.  To follow someone on twitter who knows more about D3 lax than even I do, you can follow the legendary D-III.  Imagine “Blue” from Old School, but a totally awesome old lax dude and you’ll get the picture.

Another person worth listening to is Ted Montour when he talks about the NLL.  He’s got some stuff up on e-lacrosse and the fact that I don’t recognize the names of HALF the guys he mentioned concerns me.  I thought I was getting to know NLL lacrosse.  Back to the drawing board, I guess!

St. Lawrence/club player/transfer/new england prep schooler, Brantford Winstonworth, is back and getting recruited.  How long until these guys get a movie/book/tv deal?  I’ll give it 6 months and to take it a step further, if it does get made into a movie, it will be slightly better than Tucker Maxx’s awful, awful, awful “film” but still top 3 worst movies of all time behind Slap Shot 2 and the aforementioned TM disaster.

In other news, superstar Dman, Weidmaier, is out at Princeton until midseason most likely.  Big loss for now… hope he’ll be back to cover Bitter when Princeton and UNC throw down.

In a new post on IL, Teddy Lamade talks about Title IX and how it’s hurting men’s lacrosse.  He goes on to say that he doesn’t want to cut women’s sports but thinks that football should be exempted and that would be a big part of the solution.  Well, if you exempt football, you pretty much stop trying to be equal so Teddy, that just ain’t gonna happen.   And it shouldn’t.  It’s an awful idea.  What’s the point of having a rule like Title IX if we’re just going to step around it?  You either believe in equality of you don’t.  Pretty simple.

When you factor in that football players have low graduation rates, lower grades than most student athletes on average and are often only there as a stepping stone to the NFL, the argument that football has a place at institutions of higher learning AT ALL comes into question.  Why was Tim Tebow at school last semester?  To take one class (knitting or something) AND TO PLAY M-Fing FOOTBALL!  Really?  I mean football isn’t even trying!

My proposed solution is to cut football if you want lax, and not cut the restrictions on Title IX.  Football has its place at some schools and those schools may never be Lax schools because of it.  I’m actually ok with that and it doesn’t even worry me because there are already examples where schools seem to be keeping lacrosse and ditching football (like Hofstra) or ditching some other weak sport and beefing up their lax program (like Vermont did with baseball).

If lacrosse is truly the fastest growing sport then demand will skyrocket and schools like NC State (which has a pretty mediocre football team) will need to think about the validity of their respective teams and eventually make a choice.  I don’t think Florida is going to drop football.  EVER.  But I could see a school like Cuse drop its football team if they keep performing so poorly, costs keep ramping up and the lacrosse team keeps up with the NCs.  When you consider how much history there is at Cuse for football (J. Brown, E. Davis, McNabb, etc) this is no small claim.  Is it unlikely?  HIGHLY.

Basically, equality is a good thing.  So let’s keep it.  Instead of looking for ways around it as Teddy proposes, why don’t we actually try to fix it?

On a more fun note, Ric “the Beast” Beardsley is back on IL with another blog but this one is on style.  He gives Cuse an A+, which is fair, because he admits that Desko still scares him.  He goes on to give Duke an A+ as well, which pretty much makes anything else he says totally unbelievable.  Duke always has potential with their uniforms and they NEVER deliver 100%.  An A+ is laughable.  They are a high C, low B because they never live up to the hype. Of course, then I read on and end up agreeing with a lot of the rest of his comments… damn you, Ric!  Cut back on the Duke uni love and we can be friends, ok?

Unis aren’t BAD, but not A+ material. NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. (photo via of lax.com)

And I’m going to end with a question since we’re speaking of gear and uniforms… Maverik came out with some sweet gloves for CW Post… anyone know if Post will actually be wearing these this year?

I HOPE Post is wearing these. Pretty slick!

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About the Author:
After helping to start the program at Weston HS in Massachusetts, Connor Wilson went on to play at Wesleyan University. Post-graduation, Wilson stayed on and coached at Wesleyan for 2 years. He also played in Australia and the American Lacrosse League. Currently Wilson plays for the Southampton Lacrosse Club in NYC and enjoys dyeing lacrosse sticks, eating breakfast sandwiches and a pretentious writer’s bio on LAS.

Contact him at connor@lacrosseallstars.com.