Comments on: The Bad Boys Of Lacrosse

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:11:00 +0000

True. But to me, Berkman is a pretty darn classy guy. They have lots of swagger, lots of NCs and amazing players, but they have a long tradition of awesomeness as well, and recruit off of that and hard work more than anything else. They might be better bad ass boys of lacrosse.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:10:00 +0000

not well. Very good point!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:09:00 +0000

They are definitely close to fitting the mold, but the fact is, they still haven’t won anything yet. Swagger means nothing when you consistently lose to Sals in the playoffs and don’t even make the Finals. If Stevenson can pull of a NC or three in the next bunch of years though, they’ll DEFINITELY fit the mold. Although they don’t seem to have any off the field problems whatsoever, at least not that I’ve heard of. And that’s a HUGE difference as well.

By: Oldtimer

Oldtimer — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:05:00 +0000

How Stevenson has not been brought into this conversation is beyond me. They are always talking trash, taking cheap shots, getting penalties, and hooting and hollering while they do it and beat teams 25-1…

The coach their seems to thrive on it and kids seem to love the idea of being able to talk trash and have 84 other guys there to back him up. It also resembles Miami because when they hired this coach, the school was tiny and pretty much irrelevant. Although they just added football, I don’t know that anyone can dispute that lacrosse is the big dog on that campus.

Here are some videos to show you how they carry themselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzaggO8qF_4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIqDX-RBx0M&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whcEEHejwh0&feature=related

Oh, and Roanoke isn’t too far behind them with their on field antics…

By: ThatBoy#6

ThatBoy#6 — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:27:00 +0000

Morgan still has that swagger. I actually am a fan of the Hurricanes (both then and now), and I become a bad boy once I hit the field. Thanks for putting Morgan State Legacy once again Mr. Wilson. And don’t worry, we still got that swagger from those great years.

By: Old School

Old School — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 04:57:00 +0000

Whittier College had a bit of this ”swagger” you speak of during it’s days as an NCAA team (and the only one at that time) playing in the WCLL (Western Collegiate Lacrosse League) back in the early to late 90′s. Whittier basically dominated in the Western US, winning several league championships and throttling teams like Arizona, UCSB, Chapman, Cal, etc. by 20+ goals / game with a team that consisted sevearl East Coasters (NY, MD, PA) & Canadian Box players and a dash of top players from CO, CA, and WA. Doug Locker was a master-recruiter, and he got ANYONE that he knew could help the program into Whittier (it also helped that he was also head of admissions at the college for a # of years). Financial aid packages were amazing, and the team traveled up and down the West Coast and all over the country to play games and even making east coast trips to take on the big boys at that time – Salisbury, Roanoke, Naz, OWU, Denison, Hartwich, Adelphi, Springfield. Playing top tier programs like this on a 7 day road trip was a bit gureling and most times we lost the games by anywhere from 2-5 goals, but we loved it nonetheless. NONE of these teams would ever travel to play us at that time.

We were nationally ranked every year in the NCAA D3 polls (usually in the16-20 range) and we played year round at school. It wasnt like the NCAA was going to bother us all the way out there :-) The program was the only winning program on campus and brought alot of attention to the school, however the administraton HATED us. Guys were in trouble all the time: lost of public intoxication related stuff, arrests on our campus and other campuses, And it was common for our entire team to perform community service projects set forth by the adminstration. Every year Locker would bring in 20-25 guys in the fall. Spring time, about 10 of those guys made it. The rest either flunked out or got kicked out for discipline reasons. Most of the other sports teams (especially football) HATED us at the school as we got the most support from the athletic department. We played hard, and partied MUCH harder….and the POET women loved us for it! (yes our mascott is the POET). Drinking before playing some of those club games was common…and I mean drinking a few hours before actually playing. And some guys would play baked out their minds or hopped up on speed or effies. But that didnt matter, we won, and won big in the WCLL. We beat UC San Diego one year 43-0, after a trip from the east coast where our last game played was against defending National Champion, Nazareth College. Though the game was never reported to the NCAA for their official records I do believe this was the biggest margin of loss in a game ever recorded. Locker got hate calls from coaches all across the country. But he didnt care, and neither did we.

For most of us who went there – we went there primarily to get away from the east coast lax-politics to play ball in the sweet, sweet sunshine….and to be a part of something new, and different. Plus 90 degrees in December & hangin pool-side with a couple blonde bombshells from English lit - that was an easy recruiting tool for Locker!

Whittier hit its pinnacle in the early to mid 2000′s (and made the best move in 1999 when it left the WCLL to play a full NCAA schedule) the team was ranked as high as #1 in the country for some time. Those teams were just phenominal and made good runs in the NCAA playoffs. The success of the teams in the 90′s helped Locker’s recruiting efforts even more as he lured in alot of D1 talent. The difference of the teams of the 90′s and 00′s was simply depth.

After Locker left, the program tumbled as a few HC’s came and went and did little to recruit. But Brian Kelly (from those 2000-era teams) is the HC now and is rebuilding. He knows what it takes to get back to that level and the guy works tirelessly in hopes to get them back there.

But times are different now, schools and their admins are more stringent and lax players are different (and better) athletes than those of yesteryears. No question those days were lots of fun for us old timers but its good to see the sport evolve to what it is today. In the end its much better for the game and its image.

By: Josh Rottman

Josh Rottman — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:37:00 +0000

UNLV was a bad boy team in the MCLA. Look how well that turned out.

By: Luscious Dick Tacoma

Luscious Dick Tacoma — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:06:00 +0000

The main thing missing from lacrosse in having a ‘bad boy’ team is the coach. You need a coach who not only 1) churns out wins like nobody’s business, 2) doesn’t care about administration, and most importantly 3) is willing to risk the line between ‘reckless’ and ‘out of control’.

By: NELaxBlog

NELaxBlog — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:53:00 +0000

I would say Salisbury could be a “bad boy” lacrosse team. I remember a few years back they lost 2 goalies before the NCAA final because they were smashing mail boxes off campus. Also, they have a swagger to them. Plus, the mohawks they sport are bad ass.

By: ConnorWilsonLAS

ConnorWilsonLAS — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:55:00 +0000

I didn’t include Juco when I wrote this b/c for a lot of kids, Junior College is a great chance to fix that missing element and then go on to D1 lax as a fully ready player/student.

OCC certainly has the swagger and wins to back up the nomination though!!! And those beautiful blue helmets. oh my.

By: Clax23

Clax23 — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:47:00 +0000

It might be good for the popularity, but not the image of the game. Lacrosse is still looked down upon as the “jerk” sport really and a situation like that would only build upon that image of the sport

By: will

will — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:39:00 +0000

Onondaga Community College.