Hutz | Lax tourneys are greatest gift of all

R emember back to the days when you were a kid and your neighbor was always getting the latest and greatest toys. He got the Sega and then the PlayStation and then GameCube. And you still had that original SuperNintendo that's been around forever. Sure, it's a classic, but c'mon, who doesn't want a controller that vibrates in their hands?

Well, the Ivy League has been like that deprived child for years. It's had to watch as all the other conferences conducted postseason tournaments to determine who gets to the NCAA tournament. But Uncle Jeff just gave it the best birthday present ever and now the Ancient Eight will participate in a playoff tournament.

At least for lacrosse anyway. Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans announced that a four-team playoff tournament to determine the league's automatic qualifiers to the NCAA tournament will begin in 2010.

The Ivy League has had plenty of success in lacrosse, with Princeton and Cornell's men's teams combining to claim nine National Championships since the first NCAA tournament in 1971. With lacrosse growing faster than any other NCAA sport over the last decade, now is the time for the Ivy League to keep pace with the rest of the country.

Maintaining the league's competitiveness is "one of my major motivations in this whole thing," said Princeton men's lacrosse coach Bill Tierney, who wrote a nine-page letter to the league outlining the need for a tournament that helped jump start the process.

A tournament would boost teams' RPI, which would make the NCAA tournament selection committee look a little closer at some of the Ivy schools for at-large bids. In the final RPI rankings last year, four Ivy men's teams and six women's teams finished in the top 25.

"Even if you lose in the tournament, you're still getting a good loss," Penn midfielder Barb Seaman said.

And that increased strength of schedule is more important than ever because, according to Tierney, "it's getting harder and harder [to get an at-large bid] because of all the automatic qualifiers."

The Big East added women's lacrosse in 2007, and will add a men's side in 2010, reserving one of the 16 NCAA tournament slots for the conference's winner. With the growth of the sport, there are likely to be more leagues forming in the coming years.

"We don't want to go down that road where we're not competing nationally and I think as coaches we all believe this will help us with our strength of schedule and recruiting," Penn women's coach Karin Brower said.

With the tournaments scheduled during exam weekends, it seems that for once the Ivy League is bending a little on its academics-first policy in favor of athletic competitiveness, something I'm not sure is all that bad.

Penn's Ali DeLuca, who as a senior next year could participate in the inaugural tournament, speculated that it would be an "easy transition" to the new format in 2010.

The tournament also presents a chance for the league to increase its exposure and showcase the sport to alumni and possible sponsors, something that could generate more donations and revenue. Orleans hopes it becomes a "signature event that would have a lot of value and wind up being very visible and very successful."

He said that getting TV deals worked out to broadcast at least the final rounds was important.

"It's been put back in our hands to make it good, to make it right and I'm confident that's going to happen," Tierney said.

Krista Hutz is a senior History major from Philadelphia and is former Sports Editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian. Her e-mail address is hutz@dailypennsylvanian.com

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