John Paul (Photo by Clark Bell)
As I mentioned yesterday, Michigan Coach John Paul appeared on CollegeLax Radio yesterday (his interview starts at the 10 minute mark). He talks about his roots playing for the Michigan Lacrosse program, the growth of the game in the state, and how Michigan’s program has changed over the years. “Our talent level didn’t change, but our commitment level changed,” as he says, leading to Michigan’s current run of dominance.
He also talks quite a bit about this year’s team, including the coaching assignment switch (JP is now coaching the offense while Ken Broschart has the defense, the opposite of the last few years). He gives FOGO Brian Greiner some love for exceeding expectations this season, as well, and talks about Michigan’s injuries at short-stick D-middie (Sean Sutton being the key player there) at this point in the season. Trevor Yealy also got some love from host Mike Brand, and JP shared something I didn’t know, that Yealy played for Sarnia in Canadian Junior B lacrosse over the summer.
Most interesting from my perspective – shocker, I know – is that Coach Paul was very candid (the most I’ve heard publicly) about the plans for a Varisty Lacrosse team at Michigan in the near future:
“We are very close to announcing, making the official announcement… The department has been working for the past year on putting all the plans together. And then we have one final hurdle to overcome, which is a fundraising piece.”
Well, there’s certainly no longer an attempt to keep the possibility under wraps, and it’s gone from “likely” to “near-certainty.”
“The plan is to start Fall 2012, and be competing as a Division-1 program in the Spring of 2013… Sure, it could be pushed back, and it would be if necessary. We also all recognize that we have a window right now that makes sense to take advantage of our success right now… There’s a lot of factors that just make sense to do it now.”
A year seems to be the furthest it would be pushed back, so varsity Lacrosse is certainly coming to Ann Arbor, and sometime soon (the first BCS-football school to add a team since 1980). The women’s team would probably be a year behind the men’s program in achieving varsity status.
There’s a looooot more in the interview (it’s about 25 minutes long), so check out the podcast on CollegeLax Radio for the whole thing, including JP’s thoughts on what effect Michigan’s departure might have on the MCLA.
John Paul photo from Clark Bell’s Colorado State photo gallery.