College Crosse Prospectus: Is Summer Box Lacrosse The Future?

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation!! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here are your links for June 12, 2017.

What You Missed

Our conference recaps continued with the America East!

Towson Tigers head coach Shawn Nadelen doesn’t seem to be going anywhere in the near future.

Jamaica High School is part of a booming lacrosse area in the Queens borough of New York City.

Lacrosse The Nation

The Colorado Collegiate Box Lacrosse League, America’s first collegiate box lacrosse league, just finished their inaugural draft, with play set to begin on Wednesday. You might know some faces.

Last week, the USBOXLA-sanctioned Colorado Collegiate Box Lacrosse League completed their inaugural player combine and draft, where Team USBOXLA alum and Furman freshman, Chad Kreuzer, was taken first overall by the Bighorns.

In total, 36 players were selected through the draft’s nine rounds, with athletes from NCAA DI schools like the University of Denver, Loyola University, Canisius College, Rutgers University, Lehigh University, University of Michigan, Cleveland State University, and Furman University taking part in the two-day player combine and draft.

2017 Tewaaraton Award Finalist, Trevor Baptiste, was selected 15th overall by the Fighting Bison, while Rutgers sophomore middie starter, Casey Rose, went second overall to the Stoneflies, and former Team USBOXLA players Skylar “Moose” Whinery (Colorado College) and Troy Loper (UCSB) were taken third and fourth overall, respectively.

With nine names drafted per club, team management added additional players shortly after last week’s draft, and will continue to do so leading up to the season, which starts on June 14 in Lakewood, Colorado. The CCBLL – the country’s first college-aged box lacrosse league – is powered by a unique collaboration between the Colorado Mammoth, the University of Denver, Warrior Sports, and USBOXLA.

“We want to get more kids at the collegiate level playing real, true, authentic, safe box lacrosse,” said USBOXLA Co-Founder and University of Denver Associate Head Coach Matt Brown during a recent interview on TSN Radio in Canada. “We feel this is the start of something really special and can’t wait to get it going.”

The team names are the Gold Miners, Bighorns, Stoneflies, and Fighting Bison. Here are the notable NCAA players on each of the four teams, as well as their box lacrosse position:

Gold Miners

• Cole Boland (Transition, Loyola Greyhounds)
• Jake Hardy (Defense, Canisius Golden Griffins)
• Colton Jackson (Offense, Denver Pioneers)

Bighorns

• Isaac Atencio (Defense, Cleveland State Vikings)
• Willy Gunn (Offense, Lehigh Mountain Hawks)
• Chad Kreuzer (Offense, Furman Paladins)
• Colton McCaffrey (Offense, Denver)
• Thomas Tenney (Position unknown [says offense in his USBOXLA page], Denver)

Stoneflies

• Michael Cox (Transition, Denver)
• Mikey Pryor (Offense, Denver)
• Casey Rose (Offense, Rutgers Scarlet Knights)
• Zach Runberg (Position unknown [played SSDM at Denver last season], Denver)

Fighting Bison

• Trevor Baptiste (Offense, Denver)
• Connor Donahue (Offense, Denver)
• Nate Marano (Offense, Denver)

The games will be played at the Foothills Fieldhouse in Lakewood, Colorado.

I love the idea of college kids playing box lacrosse being played in the summer. I’m not a big box guy myself, but there are plenty of college kids playing box lax up in Canada during the summer. Syracuse Orange attackman Bradley Voigt just joined the Six Nation Arrows of the Ontario Junior A Lacrosse League up in Canada, and multiple players play in Major Series Lacrosse such as Austin Shanks, Tanner Cook, Zach Currier, and Connor Fields. Penn State Nittany Lions attackman Mac O’Keefe came from a box lacrosse family and he himself played box lacrosse in Long Island. During the winter where I live, some PA high schools play in box lacrosse tournaments as well.

The league is a great idea, and I hope it can spurn some other sanctioned college box leagues across the nation so that kids on Long Island or in Philadelphia or Baltimore and everywhere in between can improve their skills no matter what position, and have fun.

Elsewhere, this is important.

Devon Moore of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review did a great story on former Marquette Golden Eagles midfielder Andy DeMichiei heading to the MLL.

“I was watching the race and keeping an eye on the draft at the same time,” he said. “I didn't get a phone call. I saw I got drafted on Twitter. It's a little less formal with the MLL. But it was definitely a good feeling.”

DeMichiei leaves his young Marquette program (in its second year when he enrolled) in much better shape than when he came in — and as defending Big East champions. The senior midfield/attack was a 2017 All-Big East Second Team selection and started every game for the Golden Eagles, recording 14 goals and a team-high 15 assists.

Marquette lost in the first round of the NCAA playoffs to Notre Dame and finished the season ranked 16th nationally with 8-8 overall record.

“He really does embody everything that we envision and wanted this program to become,” Marquette associate head coach Stephen Brundage said. “And that's what it has become. A tough, blue-collar mentality. He works extremely hard.”

Two goats.

College lacrosse gets eyeballs.

Q: What are Twitter users interested in watching? What have you been seeing from all the partnerships you’ve done so far?

A: There’s certainly audiences for lots of types of content. If you think of something like the NBA or Golden Globes red carpets, those have massive audiences. Our live strategy also includes underserved content. We had a men’s college lacrosse game that had over 680,000 viewers. What we’re finding is Twitter is a great place for really massive audiences and massive events, but also our premium live product allows us to deliver audience to underserved content.

Inside Lacrosse released their final freshman rankings

Shoutout to two Canisius alumni on graduating from The Buffalo Police Academy!

Former Virginia Cavaliers head coach Dom Starsia pens the story of Doug Knight’s path to greatness.

When I finally got a hold of Doug and we arranged to meet soon thereafter, I told him I thought he could be an excellent lacrosse player at Virginia. He looked at me like I had two heads and proceeded to inform me that he was a soccer/hockey player likely to play those two sports at a Division III school in New England. He said that he only played lacrosse because they made him do something in the spring. I told him to think about it and that we would talk again.

Meanwhile, heralded high school star attackman Michael Watson committed to Virginia and would join Tim Whiteley, who was a year ahead and already on campus. Longtime and very successful St Paul’s School (Md.) coach Mitch Whiteley challenged me on more than one occasion with, “I hope you have someone good to play with Timmy and Michael.” When I began to respond that I had this little attackman out of New England that I really liked, I could sense his skepticism.

By mid fall of his senior year (how’s that for early recruiting!), I needed a decision from Doug, and we slightly increased a minimum offer to nudge him away from Yale. Mike Waldvogel threw a bit of an “Ivy League hissy fit” and threatened to go to my athletic director to protest the pressure we were putting on Doug to decide. Believe me Mike, Doug was no Yalie, and perhaps unwittingly, one of the finest attack trios in our game’s history came together.

Philly Jawns

The jury in the Bill Cosby case is still deliberating.

World News

The Golden State Warriors defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers, 129-120, to win the 2017 NBA Finals.

Video of the Day

Check out the Museum of Failure in Sweden!

That’s it for today!! I’ll see you out there!! Make sure you follow us on social media!

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Managing Editors: Safe Fekadu, Chris Jastrzembski, Ryan McDonnell