Always in Season

I love this time of year.  After tomorrow, I can wear my holiday sweaters all the way through New Year's.  It's a short season, but a merry one.  When you're in the sports biz, you tend to regard the calendar not by months, but seasons.  It's something like being a mom, when you look at life through school schedules (or gestations periods.)

I mentioned our nine month countdown before birthing the NCAA Lacrosse Championships on Memorial Day. We've passed a relatively quiet first trimester but when I checked our Camden Yards calendar, I realized the triumphant weekend will actually be the third in a series of tournaments that carry Maryland's team sport from winter into summer. That's when it occurred to me:  in Maryland, it's always lacrosse season.  (Why don't they make garish sweaters so I can celebrate year-round?)

M&T Bank Stadium will host the first triple-header Face Off Classic in early (br-r-r-r-r-) March. Sponsored by Minolta and promoted by Inside Lacrosse magazine, the Face-Off Classic has paired top ranked college teams at the season's start . While the first three years of competition attracted as many as 20,000 fans for a doubleheader, the addition of a third pair of contenders is almost guaranteed to up the ante.

Yes, the weather can be iffy in March (remember the ignominious departure of the Colts?) and last year it was pretty miserable. But lacrosse fans are a hardy bunch and always eager to see the best teams and look at the newest equipment at the beginning of the season.

Three local teams (Maryland, Hopkins, and Loyola) will take on three tough opponents (Duke, Princeton, and Notre Dame) in that order on March 6th. A full day of hard hitting action and indoor tailgating at Pickles.

On April 17th, the second annual Smartlink Day of Rivals (another Inside Lacrosse production) takes place. This double header features two classic grudge matches -- Army-Navy and Maryland-Hopkins -- and hopefully better spring weather.

By the time Memorial Day rolls around, local lacrosse fans should be familiar with at least some of the final four because they've likely already seen them at M&T (or Annapolis, where quarter finals will be held again in 2010.)

As lacrosse becomes a major sport around the country, Maryland is increasingly recognized as the go-to place for tournaments, conventions, camps and clinics. It isn't just the top notch facilities and passionate fan base, it's institutional memory, coaching talent, rec leagues and school programs providing infrastructure to nurture athletes and develop the sport's popularity. The Lacrosse Hall of Fame is here, as is the sport's governing body and major communications network (Inside Lacrosse magazine.)   Even lacrosse equipment is manufactured here.

Maryland is a four season lacrosse state. After the winter to spring season, we'll be into professional lacrosse during the summer (finals in Annapolis again next year) and fall ball exhibitions and tourneys that continue to expand the program.

So the NCAA Championships aren't the beginning, middle or end of the 2010 lacrosse frenzy in Maryland. But they are the marquee event for the sport, and they should be a regular part of Maryland lacrosse heritage (and yes, Terry's working on that . . . .)