John Pearce Named GW's First-Ever Varsity Sailing Head Coach

Your assignment is to figure out what to do with the sheet.

Cool!

With our location in the mid-atlantic, the facilities already in place at Mt. Vernon, and an already active club team, it seems logical to me that GW would also add varsity men's lacross. Not to mention our President is the former Hopkins Provost, so I'm sure he'd be easy to convince.

LAX, brah! 

If Loyola, Hopkins, Towson, Navy, UMD, Georgetown, UMBC, UVA, Nova, St Johns, Hofstra, Umass, and may other close by or similar athletic programs to GW can flield competitive LAX teams, it's time GW moves to build a men's program. 

GW already has a Women's Lax program and has 2 more athletic teams for women than they have for men. Most of these women's programs also can offer more scholarship than can their male counterparts so Title IX is not an obstical if GW wants to build a men's lax program.  Play it at Mt Vernon in the revampted facilities.

A men's program could compete for a national title more realistically than it can in any other major college sport. GW's entire recruiting base alligns perfectly with were the best Lax players are being developed: MD, NJ, NY, NE and some FL.  St Johns, Nova, Umass and Denver and others have built top programs basically from scratch recently so past history is of much less importance for a growing sport like lacrosse.

For Christ's sake the new president is from Hopkins.  Make it happen!

The athletic programs finally seem to be on solid foundations. How about trying to remember that GWU is an academic institution, and skip LAX? Plus, we will need all of Mt.. Vernon as the site for our dam, lake, and boats.

Why would lacrosse interfere with GW's pursuit of academics?

Hopkins, Notre Dame, Cornell, Colgate, Lehigh, Bucknell, Penn, Brown and Princeton all have good lacrosse programs and seem to be doing fine with both.

maybe because they first became academic institutions, and only then became fantasy lands for the young, semi-studley, quasi-athletic, former high school footballish lads who seem so drawn to this BMWish "sport," largely, it seems, out of boredom.

Sorry, I try to keep an open mind. But I need a whole lot of convincing on this issue, bobo, and its not worth your time or mine (Though I freely admit: yours is more precious.)

I'd prefer sailing (hey, we have it!), orienteering, cross-country (I don't recall the status), or women's rugby.

Give the women a break, and let them have more teams and schollies. We abuse them day in and day out as it is. Let them enjoy college.

Forget LAX I think unless you want to eliminate other men's sports. Lacrosse teams have very large rosters. Our LAX team is kinda small at 18 listed (Maryland is closer to 30). It would cause serious Title IX issues.

Once again it would cause no title IX issues. 

Lax teams for men are small (12.6 scholarship limit for D1).  Most are partial scholarships.  Women ALREADY have a lax team with.  Women already have 2 more teams than the men and each sport generally allows for more scholarships for women than men.  This is to make up for football.  GW's women's programs can offer considerably more scholarships right now than can the men's programs.

Going forward Mens Lacrosse is has a much higher chance for sucess than any other mens sport (possibly besides baskeball).  We live in the heart of the lacrosse world, we recruit in the heart of lacrosse world, lacrosse natually pulls from the suburban middle income types that fill up GW's student enrollment and it's a fast growing sport. Compared to baseball, soccer, volleyball, swimming, water polo, etc - lacrosse is by far a smarter choice to invest GW's budget in. 

This should be a no brainer decision.

I played lacrosse at a nationally ranked lax high school, and there is nothing more I would have liked to do then come to GW and play Varisty lax, at any level. I know lots of kids here feel the same way, but we thought that academics were more important than being hardcore lacrosse players.

Everyone's got to make their own choices but I think this is why GW could grow quickly at lacrosse. Living in Severna Park MD, lots of kids play lax.  If they can get a scholarship offer from a Princeton, UNC, Duke, etc it's an easy choice. Often they're getting offers from a Towson, UMBC, MSM, Hofstra, St Johns, etc.  Good lax schools but not top level academic schools. I think plenty of good players would jump at a chance to even get a partial schollie at GW if they put together a decent program.

 YES to LAX.

Fun fact: I came to GW partially because I never heard back from the Gtown lax coach, so I said screw them. (It was one of a number of factors.) I made the right choice. 

Bobo, I think your argument is stronger without the football reference.

I got an academic scholarship to GWU. It was my best financial option, even better than in-state rates at UConn, once I figured I was willing to bite on all the loans; and it was better than any other combined loan/scholarship package at any ofther private school. So, I am biased.

My biases, coupled with my prejudicies, lead me to the conclusion that too many LAX scholarships go to pink IZOD types who can drive their own cars to school, and who don't really need extra money to go to a school they would have attended anyway. I look ok in pink IZOD these days, but had not even heard of it when I was in high school.

Anyway, I like basketball. And even though its a crazy and inefficient system to give scholarships to basketball players so they can go to college when maybe they couldn't without that money, I'll spend my entertainment dollar, and a portion of my charity dollar, on that.

Football is simply an inefficient way to maim and dismember guys, while we watch. It's impossible to play or know anything in detail about the sport and not come to a conclusion similar to that. (I played, and through a series of mistakes by overeager recruiters, even got some scholarship nibbles. I was an undersized, weak-wristed, eager, but dumb kid.) The sport is dead. It just has not yet been declared dead. I can see why colleges in the middle of nowhere might play a version or if, and why Behemoth State U will continue to play it (it isn't financially profitable, but it does churn a lot of green, and it does keep a lot of folks employed) But it is dead, and we will all see it declared dead in our lifetimes.

And, thankfully, really, nothing in the world of college "makes up" for major college football.

The first time I meet the Prez, I said with a happy smile :

"and now we can have lacross".

He said " Do you know how much money it costs?"

End of conversation.

Yuck.

cheap bastard 

ziik, my reference to football was simply that the women's programs frequently get more scholarships available to them than the corresponding male teams to make up for all the scholarships mens football takes up  (ex women get 14 baskeball schollies vs 13 for men). 

Now many believe that basketball players are just a bunch of gangsters, thugs and past, present or future criminals.  That's unfair and out of line. But having similarly unfair stereotypes on lacrosse players doesn't help enlighten the debate.

Cost really is the big sticking point.  But I would bet that considerably more students would enjoy watching top level lacrosse than any of the other non baskeball sports GW curently offers.  And that gap will likely grow every year.

So, now my biases and prejudices are unfair stereotypes, too? I'm glad I finally gave up on religion: I'd be having to confess more and more sins, under different names and categories. I'd never get back to 3 Hail Marys, for calling my brother a ---.

I know my opinions on this issue are inane and maybe in the minority, too, bobo, so go at them as you wish. That's why I laid them out. (I actually look great in pink IZOD now.)

On football, for decades we were told it was "special" and that Title IX comparables for women just did not exist. Finally, I caved, and agreed. Now, though, I just think football is too injurious, too anachronistic, too corrupt, etc., to exist.

As for LAX, and anything else: the status quo may already be too expensive at GW. I don't know. I do know there is a limited demand, a limited market, and, in my opinion, no need for more.

(what's a good attendance number for LAX? 2500?)

4-6k for the Hopkins and other good smaller schools.  How much does GW Baseball, volleyball, soccer, water polo  or tennis bring in?

Those exist for the good of the student atheeeelete, I believe, as opposed to spectator sports. We'd be berift without CJS and our tennis slut.

I fall back on my biases, prejudices, etc., and do not support college LAX, college boxing, college bowling, college tiddlywinks (a popular fixture of the 50's Ivies), college ballroom dancing, or college rodeo at GWU.