According to the stat report, the conditions for the end of the Oregon’s first era of lacrosse were perfect.
Temperatures in the mid-50s. Partly cloudy. Seventy-two people in the stands.
For the eight Oregon seniors, playing in the final game of their careers, they probably didn’t even mind. After four years of playing fourth-fiddle to track and field, softball and spring football, they’ve built the foundation of a program in relative obscurity. If they’d wanted exposure, they probably shouldn’t have come to Oregon in the first place.
In a school year that has seen the departure of another notable senior class, men’s basketball, this lacrosse class – Carrie Bateman, Jana Bradley, Jenny Browne, Lindsay Killian, Liora Lobel, Laura Lynch, Jen May and Theresa Waldron – should be remembered not as the best in Oregon history, but as arguably one of the gutsiest.
They didn’t win their league title, nor did they make it to an NCAA Tournament. But credit is due in that they took the college scholarship less traveled and tried their hand – not always successfully – at starting a program on the coast not known for its ground balls, clears and free position shots.
Everyone had offers to go to other schools, ones that hadn’t hired the first coach in the lacrosse program’s history the only year before.
Few would have expected their college career to end in Berkeley, Calif., a good 2,800 miles from the epicenter of U.S. lacrosse, in Baltimore, Md., and close to the homes of four of the seniors from Maryland. In fact All-American Jen May’s first choice, Towson University, will host this year’s NCAA Division I title game. After losing their first five games as Ducks, many of them probably were wondering if Oregon was the right choice after all.
At least Darrell Hunter, a pitcher at Springfield’s Thurston High who became the first player to sign with the rejuvenated baseball program, will know that his sport has a previous history at the University.
These players didn’t have that luxury. They had to learn by doing, Larsen said, making sure they had their uniforms and equipment in the first years. Even harder, they had to carve out a history that few cared about at a Pacific-10 Conference school. Only two other Pac-10 schools even have women’s lacrosse.
Only a true follower of the sport could pick out games against UC Davis, Denver, St. Mary’s, Stanford and California and know they were conference matchups, which can happen when you play in a quasi-conference mixture of the Pac-10, Big West, Sun Belt and the West Coast Conference.
What is surprising is that the players were able to turn a struggling program in their freshman year into one that spent 11 weeks ranked in the top-25 this season, getting as high as No. 12.
That the coaches were able to sell the original 17 members of the senior class on an idea, rather than anything tangible, is a compliment to the abilities of Larsen and assistant coach Robert Bray, and to the adventurous nature of the players who came as far as Maryland, Massachusetts, southern California and upstate New York.
There is no shortage of statistics from which to judge the four-year careers of the seniors. In the true spirit of their arrival, however, maybe the most appropriate one is 16 for 16. It’s the number of recruits the Ducks secured for the upcoming season, without losing one player they targeted.
For a program that had to fight to even get players to visit campus, it’s no small achievement – one that started with the seniors.
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