Future of Division III

[WUPHF]

I found a way to see the rosters. 18 on the mens team and 13 on womens team. That's just not enough to be competitive. Player safety would be my first concern.

I do not know anything about lacrosse, but that makes more sense.

My first reaction was of surprise that a school would cut a program with 18 players.

I am far less surprised by Lakeland cutting tennis with significantly fewer tuition-paying players.

[Kuiper]

Marian (WI) is cutting lacrosse. Interesting...

https://sabreathletics.com/news/2026/4/28/general-marian-university-announces-strategic-realignment-of-athletic-programs-to-strengthen-student-athlete-success.aspx

Wow...I went to their athletic website to see the rosters to determine how many players this impacted and they no longer have the links listed under "Sports". They've already removed the pages. That seems a bit harsh. Just my opinion.

I found a way to see the rosters. 18 on the mens team and 13 on womens team. That's just not enough to be competitive. Player safety would be my first concern.

Cal Lutheran just announced that it is cutting Women's lacrosse and cited the problem of maintaining a "robust roster."  It had 15 on the roster, 6 of whom are seniors.  They just added the fast growing sport of Girls Flag Football this year, which effectively replaces lacrosse.

Following a comprehensive review, the California Lutheran University Athletics Department announces that the women's lacrosse program will be discontinued, effective immediately. The seven-year-old program faced continued and severe challenges in maintaining a robust roster.

" While this was an incredibly difficult decision, it allows us to better focus on the strength and competitive success of our remaining 22 varsity programs," Howard N. Davis, Ed.D., associate vice president/athletic director, said.

[CNU85]

I found a way to see the rosters. 18 on the mens team and 13 on womens team. That's just not enough to be competitive. Player safety would be my first concern.

I do not know anything about lacrosse, but that makes more sense.

My first reaction was of surprise that a school would cut a program with 18 players.

I am far less surprised by Lakeland cutting tennis with significantly fewer tuition-paying players.

As a comparison, CNU has 60 on the men's roster. The women list 31.

[Gregory Sager]

I found a way to see the rosters. 18 on the mens team and 13 on womens team. That's just not enough to be competitive. Player safety would be my first concern.

I do not know anything about lacrosse, but that makes more sense.

My first reaction was of surprise that a school would cut a program with 18 players.

As CNU85 stated, and as was alluded in the Cal Lutheran presser to which Kuiper linked, both the Marian men's roster and the Marian women's roster are too small to be competitive, and the women's roster is so small that player safety is a concern.

Thing is, if Marian had its druthers, I'm sure that it would've saved both of those sports. The reason is economic; in the midwest in particular, lacrosse tends to be an upper-middle-class activity, and a big reason why both men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse programs in this part of the country have burgeoned so rapidly on the D3 level over the past decade and a half is because the families of lacrosse players are much more likely to pay out of pocket for school rather than draw a lot of aid.

What I think Marian ran into, however, is what I call "footprint sustainability." Marian's recruiting footprint is Wisconsin, and there just doesn't seem to be a big enough base of interest in (or access to) lacrosse among Wisconsin high schoolers to sustain the sport at multiple-D3-school levels.

For evidence of this, look at the nemesis of Marian and all of the other Wisconsin D3 privates: the WIAC. The WIAC sponsors women's lacrosse, but it does not sponsor men's lacrosse. Right away, that tells me that Title IX is a major motivator for those schools to maintain the sport on a conference level only for women, despite the fact that the sport itself draws far more interest as an activity among high school boys than it does among high school girls. Now look at the schools participating in WIAC women's lacrosse. There are nine teams, but only five of them represent actual WIAC member schools. The other four are non-Wisconsin-based private schools (Augsburg, Colorado College, Hamline, and St. Benedict) participating as affiliate members. And of the five true WIAC teams, four -- UWEC, UWL, UWRF, and UW-Stout -- represent four of the five WIAC campuses that are located close to the state's western border. And that's no accident. If you look at the rosters of the Blugolds, Eagles, Falcons, and Blue Devils women's lacrosse teams, you'll see so many Minnesotans that the teams are probably passing around baking pans of tater tot hotdish in the back of the bus.

This past season Marian had seven Wisconsinites (better known as "Sconnies" in Minnesota parlance) on the men's lacrosse team and four on the women's lacrosse team, and to me that just screams poor footprint sustainability for Marian lacrosse.

I am far less surprised by Lakeland cutting tennis with significantly fewer tuition-paying players.

Tennis is actually a lucrative -- I don't like to use that word in connection with D3, but if we're being honest it's a major consideration in terms of which students are paying full boat (or at least mostly out-of-pocket) at your typical D3 private and which ones are likely drawing a lot of aid -- sport at the D3 level, even with the small rosters, provided that you have six functional, well-kept courts on campus. Lakeland doesn't; it rents the courts at nearby Howards Grove High School. If you're renting, you're spending, and if you're spending and you bring a small roster to the table, the higher-ups may decide that you're more trouble than you're worth at a small private D3 that is pinching pennies in the current demographic environment.

They just added the fast growing sport of Girls Flag Football this year, which effectively replaces lacrosse.

I wouldn't say it's an exact fit as a replacement, because it appears to me that on average flag represents a different economic stratum than lacrosse in terms of participants (I'm waiting with bated breath now for some NESCAC type to jump in and tell me that all of the prep schools in New England have leaped onto the flag bandwagon ;-) ), but in terms of roster sizes and number of sports offered, yeah, it's more or less an effective replacement.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

The Northeast - Virginia to Maine - is still, by far, the hotbed of HS lacrosse.  If your school lacks the prominence or geography to draw a fair number of students from this part of the country, it's going to be much tougher to field a competitive squad.

The popularity of lacrosse is increasing in the west and midwest, but not really yet at a level where it can feed a lot of college programs.

[Gregory Sager]

The Northeast - Virginia to Maine - is still, by far, the hotbed of HS lacrosse.  If your school lacks the prominence or geography to draw a fair number of students from this part of the country, it's going to be much tougher to field a competitive squad.

Nationally competitive ... yes, well, you can't overcome generations of sport history overnight. Prior to Y2K the northeastern corridor was practically the only place in America where anybody owned a lacrosse stick. That's changed, but it will take awhile before schools from other parts of the country break through in the national tournament. It's the same as soccer, which has also been a sport predominantly played by northeastern high schools, and thus dominated at the D3 level by northeastern members, until recent decades (although soccer started to break out in the midwest a generation before lacrosse). Soccer still has a pronounced northeastern flavor on the D3 level, although more and more midwestern teams have broken through in the D3 tourney over the past 10-15 years.

The popularity of lacrosse is increasing in the west and midwest, but not really yet at a level where it can feed a lot of college programs.

It depends upon what you mean by "a lot." And it also depends upon the state. Illinois has reached a sufficient saturation level in terms of high school lacrosse that it can supply a pretty fair amount of competent D3 lacrosse players. Just looking at the CCIW's men's lacrosse teams, Augustana's roster consists of 81% Illinois residents (albeit, Augie has a small roster and the team is not very good). Carroll's men's lacrosse is a little over half Illinoisian, which is impressive given the Wisconsin-heavy orientation of most CU sports (see above for my commentary about the very modest success of lacrosse's spread within Wisconsin high schools). Illinois Wesleyan is 40% Illinoisian and North Central is 43% Illinoisian. Carthage and Elmhurst have comparatively low percentages of Illinois residents.

But the important thing to note is where they're getting their out-of-state players. Virtually none of them are from the northeastern corridor. They tend to hail from Ohio, Minnesota, Michiana, and the suburbs of western cities such as Phoenix, Denver, Portland, and Seattle.

[Ralph Turner]

The Northeast - Virginia to Maine - is still, by far, the hotbed of HS lacrosse.  If your school lacks the prominence or geography to draw a fair number of students from this part of the country, it's going to be much tougher to field a competitive squad.

The popularity of lacrosse is increasing in the west and midwest, but not really yet at a level where it can feed a lot of college programs.

My good friend did Medical School and Residency at Hopkins. He and his wife went out to a JHU lacrosse match against Syracuse ... and saw Jim Brown playing. Yeah, #32 for the Cleveland Browns.

[Ralph Turner]

Post #4008 Gregory Sager!

+1, 30 times.  Excellent assessment that tells the truth!

[Gregory Sager]

My good friend did Medical School and Residency at Hopkins. He and his wife went out to a JHU lacrosse match against Syracuse ... and saw Jim Brown playing. Yeah, #32 for the Cleveland Browns.

Jim Brown was a two-sport All-American for the Orange: football and lacrosse. Not only was he a two-time All-American in lacrosse, they actually changed the rules of the game because of his dominance in the sport; when I was growing up in the suburbs of Syracuse, the rules said that you had to keep your stick in continuous motion if you had the ball. Everybody called it "the Jim Brown rule," because he had dominated the sport so much by just tucking the ball in the net of his stick and holding it stationary close to his body. (The rule is no longer in effect.) He's in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, and the MVP award of America's professional lacrosse league is called the Jim Brown Trophy.

Jim Brown also played two seasons of basketball for Syracuse, averaging well into double-digit scoring both seasons. His teammates said that they could've won a national championship if Brown had stayed with the team -- but the program had an unwritten rule that at least three of the five starters had to be white, and the team's other two stars were black, and they only played basketball. Brown had to put up with a lot of racial nonsense like that at SU; they didn't even give him a football scholarship until his junior year, despite the fact that he was the best player the Orange had from the moment he set foot on campus, and he was not allowed to live in the football dorm.

The coach of the Syracuse boxing team watched Brown spar and said that if he wanted to dedicate himself to the sweet science Brown could definitely contend to be the heavyweight champion of the world. Even though he never played baseball at SU, either, the Yankees were interested enough in him to give him a tryout, and Casey Stengel wanted to sign him. Brown wisely deferred where Michael Jordan succumbed, however, and turned Stengel down, recognizing that baseball success demanded certain specific skills that had to be developed over a long period of time and that the probability of success for an entry-level player was lower in that sport than in others.

Because of lacrosse season he couldn't practice with the Syracuse track team, but if there was a window in his schedule he'd put on his tracksuit and compete in meets for the Orange. One day in May of 1957 he suited up for the Syracuse track team, won the high jump and javelin, placed second in the discus, and helped Syracuse beat Colgate in a dual meet. Then he went over to the lacrosse field, put on his lacrosse uniform, and led the way to an 8-6 win over Army that secured an undefeated season for Syracuse. Despite the fact that he hardly trained at all for it -- how could he find the time to do so? -- he finished fifth in the decathlon at the National AAU meet in 1954.

Oh, and Brown was not only the best running back in college football when he was at Syracuse, he was also the kicker for the Orange.

Jim Brown was a freakishly gifted athlete. You can easily put him up against Jim Thorpe, Dave Winfield, and Bo Jackson in a conversation about the most talented all-around athlete that America has ever produced.

[WUPHF]

Tennis is actually a lucrative -- I don't like to use that word in connection with D3, but if we're being honest it's a major consideration in terms of which students are paying full boat (or at least mostly out-of-pocket) at your typical D3 private and which ones are likely drawing a lot of aid -- sport at the D3 level, even with the small rosters, provided that you have six functional, well-kept courts on campus. Lakeland doesn't; it rents the courts at nearby Howards Grove High School. If you're renting, you're spending, and if you're spending and you bring a small roster to the table, the higher-ups may decide that you're more trouble than you're worth at a small private D3 that is pinching pennies in the current demographic environment.

Right, just less lucrative with the discontinuation of tennis being less surprising than other sports, in my opinion.

Tennis court maintenance is pretty expensive too and arguably seen by institutions as being less important than maintaining an on-campus football field or field house.