COLUMN: Now or never for M. Lax

Consider the facts: · Lacrosse is a regional game, played primarily in the Northeast. · A disproportionate number of players come from the suburbs of New York City and Baltimore, like the Penn population as a whole. · Lacrosse, as a result of its demographic base, is one of the few sports where Ivy League teams compete on even terms with scholarship schools. Right now, Princeton is the defending national champion. · Although Penn's pedigree in the sport is not as impressive as other Ivies, the Quakers were in the Final Four as recently as 1988 and its coaching position is considered one of the "premier" jobs in the sport, according to Virginia coach Dom Starsia, who guided his Cavaliers to the NCAA title game this year. So why is the Penn program firmly established as the worst in the league, having gone over two full seasons without an Ancient Eight (actually Seven since Columbia doesn't field a team) victory? You need to look no further than Monday's announcement for an answer. No, it's not ex-Virginia assistant Marc Van Arsdale's fault -- he's only been on the job three days. What's troubling is that this is the third time in the last six years the Athletic Department has welcomed a new coach to "the Penn athletic family." It's been a steady descent for the program since Tony Seaman, the architect of Penn's glory years of the 1980s, traded Penn for lacrosse superpower Johns Hopkins. Seaman's immediate successor was G.W. Mix, a Penn alumnus and former assistant. Mix consolidated the decline that began in Seaman's last year, and by the time he resigned after the 1994 campaign, Penn had suffered four straight losing seasons. Penn then went in a different direction. If Mix was the born-and-bred Quaker, then successor Terry Corcoran was the outsider. A spectacularly successful coach at Division III Washington College in Maryland, Corcoran was the new blood who would revitalize the Quakers. Needless to say, it didn't happen. The team menaced a number of highly-ranked Ivy League opponents, but never broke through for a win in either year. To watch last year's Penn-Princeton game was to see a contest so one-sided it could hardly be called a sport. Indeed, the 19-4 scoreline was flattering to the Quakers. So Corcoran, failing to stop the bleeding, to say nothing of building the program, is returning to the comfort of Division III. Which brings us, in a round-about way, to the real question -- how long does a good program have to go through a bad period before it is a bad program? Clearly, Penn is at a crossroads, an even more important point in its development than 1990 or 1994. Six years is a long time to be league doormat in college athletics. If that reputation sticks, if Penn is branded a second-class lacrosse citizen, the program will be caught in the same cycle as, say, Cornell basketball. Unable to attract top players to improve, the Quakers will have no chance to be good enough to attract the best players. That's where Van Arsdale comes in. He spent six years honing his craft at Virginia, runner-up in the 1996 playoffs and a consistently first-class team. He is well-known in lacrosse circles as an up-and-coming coach and offensive strategist. At age 33, he figures to be just the sort of young blood Penn needs. Creating Penn anew is not an impossible task. In five years, Bill Tierney took Princeton from laughing-stock to national champion. No doubt, it is unfair to ask Van Arsdale to match that, but the gains must be immediate and they must be tangible. Playing well for 57 minutes is not going to cut it -- the 1996 team already showed it could do that. Van Arsdale's task is crystal clear -- beat someone in the league. Anyone. Otherwise, a few summers from now, we'll be treated to a new batch of press releases proclaiming deep regret and wishing Van Arsdale, like Mix (and Corcoran) before him, "the best in his future endeavors."