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Coaching Moves – It’s Just That Time of Year

The summer is usually pretty slow and we manage to fill the time with tournaments, recruiting talk, movie news and funny videos or photos from the past year.  One of the other major topics of discussion across the college lax would relates to the comings and going of head coaches.

We have talked about Tierney going to Denver to replace Munro, We saw Voelker, formerly of UPenn, head over to nearby Drexel and we saw Bates go from Drexel to Princeton.  Penn is still looking for a replacement but the job simply isn’t that coveted by big name coaches.  I believe it will take a no-name or no experience candidate to fill the void and whoever takes the job will have their hands full from the get go as the program, while improved, still has a long, long way to go to really compete in the usually excellent Ivy League.

Now there are also some smaller jobs open but they still deserve a lot of notice because they are either tradition laden programs, areas of recent expansion or brand spanking new teams entering the wonderful world of college lax.

Zazzarro left Colorado College and while the rumor mill has the candidates whittled down to three top quality options, no one knows who they are and the school has stayed pretty mum on the subject.  I have been saying that Lamb, formerly of BYU, deserves to be considered but mostly I get met with looks of absolute confusion and sometimes even anger when I bring it up so I’m going to let that one die as nothing more than my personal opinion on the matter.

Greg Paradine is rumored to be taking over the new program at Lenoir-Rhyne, a D2 school in NC, but neither UNC nor L-R has confirmed this rumor. wait a minute. L-R has confirmed it. He’s a defensive minded coach and would be a great guy to get a program going down there in Hickory, yes HICKORY, NC.

Gene Peluso is out at RIT.  Rochester Institute of Technology is a storied team in the heartland of Upstate New York lacrosse.  The school is excellent academically and with all of the amazing laxers that live in the area, I can’t see them having ANY problems filling that spot with a real winner.  Another opening exists down the road in Jersey at Stevens Institute of Technology. SIT is, again, a top notch academic institution with a very longstanding lacrosse tradition going all the way back to 1885.  That is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR years, which is flat out amazing.  The previous coach is now an asst AD at Stevens.

One of the most interesting hires is Lebanon Valley College in PA taking on John Haus who used to run the program at UNC and Hopkins and ALSO won the 1998 D3 National Championship with an amazing Washington College team; the ONLY time that storied program has ever won the USILA NC.

The hires, fires, resignations and promotions will continue as the summer rolls on and LAS will be there to update you and provide some opinion.  So far the hires have been great and the fires have been no surprise, for the most part.  Fall is just around the corner so you can be sure that every team without a coach is looking like crazy and hoping they can get the next Tierney or Haus to lead their squad.