Colleges switching lacrosse leagues

Loyola men’s lacrosse coach Charley Toomey might want to start thinking about purchasing new luggage.

With the expected changes to Loyola’s lacrosse league, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, in 2010, he’ll need it.

The ECAC will add five schools from the Great Western Lacrosse League — Air Force, Bellarmine, Denver, Ohio State and Quinnipiac — to replace Georgetown, Massachusetts, Rutgers, Penn State and St. John’s, which all move to other leagues.

“We’ll earn a couple of frequent flyer miles no doubt,” Toomey said. “We talked about every other year we would be going to Colorado [to play Air Force and Denver] to not have to make two trips in one year. There was some talk about travel partners and playing one team on a Friday and switching and playing the other on a Sunday, but I am not for it. That’s a tough trip in itself to play one team.”

With the formation of a Big East lacrosse league in 2010, schools that were members of the conference in other sports were compelled to join. The new league will include defending national champion Syracuse, Georgetown, St. John’s, Rutgers, Providence, Notre Dame and Villanova.

“The lacrosse world is going through a metamorphosis and the ECAC Lacrosse League has emerged stronger than ever,” ECAC commissioner Rudy Keeling said in a statement. “The combination of the teams from the ECAC and the Great Western Lacrosse League will make us one of the power lacrosse conferences in the country.”

The majority of Loyola’s teams compete in the Metro-Atlantic Athletic Conference, but its lacrosse team wanted to be in a league with tougher competition.

The move also created ripples in the Colonial Athletic Association, which lost Villanova but gained Massachusetts and Penn State to compete in 2010. Sacred Heart and Robert Morris announced they will withdraw from the CAA to form a lacrosse league for the Northeast Conference.

The Nittany Lions and Minutemen join existing CAA members Towson, Hofstra, Delaware and Drexel. Delaware (9-7, 3-3 CAA) reached the Final Four two years ago, 18th-ranked Drexel (13-4, 5-1) won the CAA regular season title and 15th-ranked Hofstra (10-6, 5-1) won the league tournament to earn the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament this past spring. The Tigers finished 5-9 overall and 3-3 in the CAA.

Leagues must have at least six members for the conference’s winner to earn an automatic berth in the 16-team NCAA Tournament.

“It certainly boosts our [Ratings Percentage Index] and makes our strength of schedule that much stronger,” Towson coach Tony Seaman said. “It establishes the CAA as one of the top three leagues in the country.”

Loyola, which finished 7-7 and won the ECAC for the first time with a 5-1 record to earn its second consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament, finished the season ranked 16th. Seventh-ranked Ohio State (11-6) beat Ivy League champion Cornell in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before falling to top-seeded Duke. Seventeenth-ranked Denver (10-6) earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament but lost at eighth-seeded Maryland in the opening round.

With the expanded conference, Toomey also is looking forward to growing Loyola’s recruiting base.

“The success we have had in the past two years has been the first change in reaching out all over the place, going to the tournament for the second straight time,” he said. “There is a lot of good things going on. It will allow us to put our chemicals out in some areas we haven’t had a chance to go out and watch kids play in that area, let alone let them see us play.”

dcarey@baltimoreexaminer.com

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