With a thrilling quarter final weekend behind us, four teams will go on to semi-final games on Saturday, May 24. Cornell and Penn State play at noon ET and Syracuse and Maryland follow at 2:30. The winners meet on Memorial Day, May 26, at 1:00. The games are broadcast live on the ESPN network and streamed on ESPN+. The Division 1 Women's Semi-Final and Championship games are also available on ESPN on May 23 and 25.

Anyone who reads Old Tybee Ranger this time of year knows he has a thing for college lacrosse. This year is no exception as my Maryland Terps face some serious challenges that guarantee fast and hard hitting action. This is Maryland's centennial year playing varsity lacrosse. They've achieved great success over those years including recognition as one of the top schools in the sport. Much of the credit for Maryland's recent success goes to its head coach, John Tillman, an extraordinary recruiter with nine years of coaching experience at Ithaca, Navy, and Harvard. In his fifteen years at Maryland he brought the team to eleven NCAA Final Four appearances and six title games, including two National Championship. It's been nothing less than a brilliant blend of team management and player skill.

So what is this game called lacrosse? Lacrosse is an ancient American sport, dating from about 1000 C.E. In it's early days, the game had a religious significance. Sides could consist of as many as a few thousand players and the losing side sometimes paid with their lives. In the middle of the 19th century William George Beers, a Canadian dentist and lacrosse enthusiast, wrote rules and parameters to make the game more gentlemanly. His efforts paid dividends quickly as many clubs formed from the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River Valley. The Mohawk Lacrosse Club (New York, 1868) was the first club in the United States. Intercollegiate competition followed a decade later focused on universities from New York to Maryland.

An Indian Ball Play                       George Catlin, 1846-50

Fast forward to today and you could say the game still has that religious fervor if you live from Maryland to New England. It's that part of the country where three-year-old boys (and some girls) get little lacrosse sticks for Christmas. These days the teams are a bit smaller - ten players to a side - but there's still a good likelihood of some bloodshed of the non-fatal variety. Little more than a generation ago the game at the college level was a virtually exclusive sport heavily anchored in the Ivy League and the Northeast. Today there are more than sixty Division I teams found on the East and West Coasts and at the flagship universities in the interior. Each year that number grows by two or three teams. Expansion in other college divisions and at the K-12 level is so great that the sport is recognized as the fastest growing team sport in the country. If you're interested in more information go to usalacrosse.com

Today around 900,000 players participate in some form of organized lacrosse. I'd say that's a sign of an outstanding future for the game. And speaking of the future, it looks brilliant for both Maryland and Johns Hopkins as they move from a strong season in 2024 to 2025 when both teams should return to powerhouse status. I am so looking forward to that and as always the annual Maryland-Hopkins clash spurred on by the cheers heard at around 120 games over the last 128 years.

Fear the Turtle!