Since I was no the road yesterday and only managed to post the press release, it’s only fair that I give a bit of analysis about the latest development in Michigan women’s lacrosse. The squad was granted admission to the American Lacrosse Conference for their inaugural campaign in the Spring of 2013.
So what is the ALC? For starters, it’s a damn good conference. Its members have won 6 of the last 7 National Championships (OK, member – all of that glory is thanks to Northwestern), and Johns Hopkins – a traditional power on the men’s side, located in Baltimore, one of the games hottest hotbeds – has finished near the bottom of the conference over the past few years, but still within the top 25 of LaxPower’s computer rankings.
Michigan joins not only the Wildcats and Blue Jays, but also fellow Big Ten squads Ohio State and Penn State, along with Florida (a first-year squad that spent much of the 2011 season atop the national polls) and Vanderbilt. Aside from the Big Ten teams, it isn’t much of a geographically-oriented league, with two SEC squads and a team in Baltimore, but that doesn’t mean it’s a weak conference by any stretch of the imagination. Per LaxPower’s computer ratings, the weakest team in the ALC (Hopkins) would be the strongest team 6 in the country’s 12 conferences.
It will be no easy road for Michigan’s first team, and their work is cut out for them. That said, Florida came onto the scene and was not only competitive, but elite in their first year, so it can be done.