Corey McLaughlin in Ann Arbor

John Paul (Photo by Clark Bell)

Shortly after I published yesterday’s links piece on the site, Corey McLaughlin posted his first story from his trip to Ann Arbor. Some interesting tidbits:

The Buckeyes have set and broken the all-time NCAA regular season lacrosse game attendance record each time. In the 2011 “Showdown at the ‘Shoe,” game against Air Force, 31,078 fans were announced to have watched. Michigan coach John Paul said the Wolverines would like to surpass that record at their 109,901 seat home venue in Ann Arbor this year.

“We’d really like to set the attendance record that day,” Paul told Lacrosse Magazine earlier this week.

And facilities tidbits for the future:

Paul said home games can be played in Michigan Stadium and the Wolverines’ soccer facility, or, if weather forces games indoors, Oosterbaan Field House, where the club team played and where they’ve practiced this fall. Early plans are in the works for a lacrosse-only facility to be finished in three to four years, Paul said.

McLaughlin’s article says the schedule should be released later this week. A game against Detroit at Ultimate Soccer in Pontiac should be a nice season kickoff for the Wolverines. As you may recall, the Titans played Mercer there last season. The seating situation will probably be a little more interesting with both in-state teams taking part.

Athletic Director David Brandon and Coach John Paul

McLaughlin’s second article is a lengthy interview with Michigan AD David Brandon. On to the interesting tidbits:

The more we dug into it, the more we believed that this is just a sport of the future. You could make a case that some sports are a sport of the past. They’re shrinking in importance; they’re shrinking in the numbers of programs. That doesn’t make them bad or that doesn’t mean we don’t want to offer them, it just means that they’re not great trend lines to me. Lacrosse’s trend lines in every way we could measure were impressive and made us believe that this is a place where we could grow and be a part of something that would over time be very big.

That “trend lines” thing is the most Dave Brandon-y comment that could ever be said about lacrosse. And Brandon on facilities:

We’re looking at a couple options and they have real estate implications. Architects are going to work. We’re not prepared to talk about anything specifically, but we’re going to put these student-athletes in the same environment we try to put all our student-athletes in, in terms of competitive facilities, facilities where we can recruit aggressively, and facilities that are in keeping with our sense of our self.

He also predicts that it’s going to boom as a television sport in the near future, which makes sense with BTN looking for non-boring Spring content.