The Collegian
Friday, March 29, 2024

Men's lax team increasing its intensity

With the impending transition of the Men's Club Lacrosse team to the varsity level, some players have begun to wonder if the change is right for them.

Over the past year, a new coaching staff has been hired, new gear has been ordered and there has been an increase in the amount of weekly practices and training sessions, said Mike Soriano, a sophomore defender.

Junior Jon Poole, a former member of the team, said at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, the team had been structured a lot like most other club teams at the University of Richmond: There were no real tryouts, the team was run primarily by seniors and practices and games were essentially optional.

"It was really laid back and relaxed," Poole said. "The older guys ran practices and we had a volunteer coach, but when coach Carter was hired, everything changed."

Many of the players did not even know the team had ambitions of becoming a Division 1 team until Glenn Carter was hired to coach it, Soriano said. The players then realized their club sport would require a bit more commitment than they had initially anticipated, which caused controversy among the players, he said.

Sophomore Logan Bartrug, a former team member said: "Seven or eight kids quit right away because practice was becoming too intense. I just wanted to have fun and play on weekends."

Of the about 40 players on the team in September 2011, half decided to continue playing with the increased commitment, Bartrug said. As for their reasons for quitting, some said they were too busy with homework and classes to practice five times during the week or that the team was not as fun when they were forced to come to practice, he said.

Soriano disagreed with such reasoning. "I think some of the guys quit just because they are lazy," he said.

With the added pressures and time obligations of building a Division 1 program, Bartrug said, upperclassmen who have been on the team since before coach Carter's arrival were finding it more difficult to balance their old schedules with the new one, which involves much more lacrosse.

Poole said the number of practices was one of the reasons he decided to leave the team. "I was a tour guide, I was the vice president of my fraternity and I had a girlfriend," he said. "And all of that was too much to balance with playing lacrosse five times a week."

Freshman goalie Mike Buckbinder said that as new players were now being recruited from around the country to join the team, older players -- who were not recruited and joined the team with no real tryout -- also faced the threat of losing playing time.

"I think a lot of upperclassmen quit because they don't want to play under freshmen," he said.

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The expectation that many sophomores, juniors and seniors had upon joining the club lacrosse team was that the team would function similarly to other club teams: Playing a club sport would fit around their busy schedules and would not take over their lives, Poole said.

"I just wanted to play lacrosse," he said. "I didn't realize how much commitment it would take."

Contact reporter James Riddick at james.riddick@richmond.edu

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