The efforts of coaches and a special vote in December helped put into place the men's and women's Ivy League lacrosse tournaments that will now determine the league's automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament, according to Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans.
Previously, the winner of the round-robin regular season received the automatic bid, a method that sometimes involved complex tie-breaker scenarios. Orleans announced last Thursday that these new tournaments will involve the top four men's and women's teams from Ivy play. They will begin at the end of the 2010 season.
The work of one coach in particular helped set the changes in motion. Orleans said he received a "long letter" from Princeton men's lacrosse coach Bill Tierney, who has led the Tigers to six National Championships and has sat on the NCAA Division I tournament selection committee, regarding a possible tournament. With the backing of the Ancient Eight's other coaches, the league decided to look a little further into the proposal for a tournament.
"The coaches, both men's and women's, felt that they wanted to try a tournament for two reasons," Orleans said. "There were more and more ties for the champion. . They also felt that bringing strong teams together at the end of the season could help in RPI and give a better chance in some respects for getting a 3rd team in [to the NCAA tournament]."
Last year, Princeton's and Cornell's women's teams tied for second place in the league behind Penn, which eventually lost in the National Championship game. Yet only the Tigers garnered an at-large bid.
On the men's side, Brown and Cornell split the Ivy League Championship, but the head-to-head tiebreaker sent the Big Red to the tournament and Brown was left out by the selection committee.
Once the Ivy office was satisfied with the report it compiled based on conversations with coaches, athletic directors and school business offices, there was pressure to get a vote on the table.
Often debates regarding league changes are taken up during the set of meetings in May and June, but according to Orleans, the athletic directors needed to know sooner so they could begin planning the 2010 schedule. The tournaments were put on the fall meeting agenda and a final vote was taken in December.
The tournaments will require each team to give up a non-conference game and all eight schools will split the costs of the tournaments, which will be held at the homes of the respective men's and women's regular season champions.
The regular season records will still officially determine the Ivy League champion.
However, there are still a few issues, namely broadcasting the games, that need to be worked out.
"Both [the Ivy office] and the campuses have TV contacts, so we'll be pursuing the rest of winter and early spring to see who's interested and what's the best deal," Orleans said.
The league is looking to televise at least the final round of each tournament.
Orleans said that the tournaments are not just a trial run. Of course, the league will evaluate them for attendance and financial and competitive success and would need a two-year transition period to revert to the original format if necessary.
But with a little help from some nice weather and fan support, Orleans is hoping they will be a hit.
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