The Long Island Lacrosse community is in dire need of a real league and structure, boys and girls. With your experience of launching a soccer league, you should launch a properly run and managed lacrosse league. Right now all the leauges are a scattered mess and the tournaments are local non-sense (players of different ages jumping around teams). Maybe tie in with other regionals and national leagues and tournaments. Only problem is you would probably have a hard time getting yellow jackets to play in it at this point, which is okay because no one wants to play in their tournament either.
In order for a league structure to take hold and supercede the independent leagues now in place, there must be support from a sanctioning body (US Lacrosse, locally represented by the Long Island Metropolitan Lacrosse Foundation) and a process for club and player registrations. This is one reason why BOTC recently interviewed Harry Jacobs and shared that interview with our readers.
Our goal should be to create something sustainable, not based on the people doing it today, but longer term for the betterment of Long Island lacrosse.
As for how such a league might evolve in the future, you could certainly attract a large number of town teams and over time, an elite program will emerge from such a structure. Once those elite structures begin to emerge, current elite programs might seek to join.
One reason why a league structure would initially focus on town teams is that these programs have access to field space (usually on local permits) which makes the schedule creation process all that much easier. When premier/elite programs do not have permits for fields is when the problems start in scheduling.
Sounds like a logistical and political nightmare, and something that would take a long time to develope. I see many soccer clubs and organizations who seem to own their own fields and complexs devoted to soccer. Does this exist anywhere in lacrosse? Seems all the league games are like you said, on town permitted property and all the worthwhile tournaments are out of state.
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