NCAA lax playoffs 2011

[First Cornell has to make the playoffs and advance past the first round, but then:] There are capacity and geographical issues with the 2011 NCAA lacrosse quarterfinals sites, and problems worse than Cornell running out of hot dogs (and electricity for the scoreboard?) when it hosted the 2008 quarters. The first round is at the sites of the higher-seeded schools. The finals are again in Baltimore at M&T Bank Stadium.

The quarterfinals are Saturday 5/21 at Hofstra and Sunday 5/22 at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. That should annoy the southern schools because the fans have to travel. But worse, the Long Island semifinal is at a stadium that may not be big enough for the sport: Hofstra's Shuart Stadium has a capacity of 13,000, better than Stony Brook's hopelessly too small Lavelle Stadium (8136) where Cornell took down Army last year and SB almost overame Virginia, but Shuart may be not big enough to hold the 2011 crowd. Especially if HOfstra (currently #10) makes it that far. The quarterfinals really should be at a 20,000-seat stadium, meaning Schoellkopf or Princeton (or Giants Stadium or Rutgers) would qualify in NY / NJ.

I left the subject line broad in case this crosses over to other playoffs issues.

billhoward
(First Cornell has to make the playoffs and advance past the first round, but then There are capacity and geographical issues with the 2011 NCAA lacrosse quarterfinals sites, and problems worse than Cornell running out of hot dogs (and electricity for the scoreboard?) when it hosted the 2008 quarters. The first round is at the sites of the higher-seeded schools. The finals are again in Baltimore at M&T Bank Stadium.

The quarterfinals are Saturday 5/21 at Hofstra and Sunday 5/22 at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. That should annoy the southern schools because the fans have to travel. But worse, the Long Island semifinal is at a stadium that may not be big enough for the sport: Hofstra's Shuart Stadium has a capacity of 13,000, better than Stony Brook's hopelessly too small Lavelle Stadium (8136) where Cornell took down Army last year and SB almost overame Virginia, but Shuart may be not big enough to hold the 2011 crowd. Especially if HOfstra (currently #10) makes it that far. The quarterfinals really should be at a 20,000-seat stadium, meaning Schoellkopf or Princeton (or Giants Stadium or Rutgers) would qualify in NY / NJ.

I left the subject line broad in case this crosses over to other playoffs issues.

I remember there being plenty of empty seats in the corners when we were at Hofstra 2 years ago. If I recall the four teams were Cornell, Princeton, Maryland, and Syracuse. Hofstra making it that far would obviously help attendance, but I suspect 13,000 is still plenty of space. Announced attendance two years ago was approximately 11,200.

Personally, I thought Stony Brook was a great experience last year. Beautiful stadium. There may have been some people who wanted to come that didn't get tickets, but considering the standing room that probably wasn't the case. And a full house is fun, as long as you get a ticket. That wasn't a problem last year as long as you got your ticket within a few days after the first round.

Ronald '09
I remember there being plenty of empty seats in the corners when we were at Hofstra 2 years ago. If I recall the four teams were Cornell, Princeton, Maryland, and Syracuse. Hofstra making it that far would obviously help attendance, but I suspect 13,000 is still plenty of space. Announced attendance two years ago was approximately 11,200.

Personally, I thought Stony Brook was a great experience last year. Beautiful stadium. There may have been some people who wanted to come that didn't get tickets, but considering the standing room that probably wasn't the case. And a full house is fun, as long as you get a ticket. That wasn't a problem last year as long as you got your ticket within a few days after the first round.

Hofstra says the place has come close to selling out for lax: [www.gohofstra.com] >>> The two largest crowds in Hofstra Stadium history occurred during the hosting of the NCAA Lacrosse Quarterfinals. A crowd of 12,292, an NCAA men’s lacrosse championship quarterfinal record and the largest-ever lacrosse crowd on Long Island, witnessed the 1999 NCAA quarterfinals featuring Hofstra versus Johns Hopkins and Duke versus Georgetown, and 10,510 fans attended the 2001 quarterfinals that featured Hofstra against Syracuse.

One of us has faulty recall about last year's Stony Brook game. (If '09 is your grad year then odds are it'd be me.) Still, my recall is that no tickets were available day-of-game although there were some empty seats during the Cornell-Army game. If someone called Cornell week-of-game, Cornell said call Stony Brook ("they might have tickets", and Stony Brook said "no." Nice facility sized appropriately for SBU sports events? Yes. For NCAA lax on Long Island? Not big enough. The only people who got tickets at the stadium on game day were those who walked the lines, kept asking if anyone had extra tickets, and eventually somebody had bought four and only three showed up. On this I definitely agree with you: "And a full house is fun, as long as you get a ticket."

billhoward

Ronald '09
I remember there being plenty of empty seats in the corners when we were at Hofstra 2 years ago. If I recall the four teams were Cornell, Princeton, Maryland, and Syracuse. Hofstra making it that far would obviously help attendance, but I suspect 13,000 is still plenty of space. Announced attendance two years ago was approximately 11,200.

Personally, I thought Stony Brook was a great experience last year. Beautiful stadium. There may have been some people who wanted to come that didn't get tickets, but considering the standing room that probably wasn't the case. And a full house is fun, as long as you get a ticket. That wasn't a problem last year as long as you got your ticket within a few days after the first round.

Hofstra says the place has come close to selling out for lax: [www.gohofstra.com] >>> The two largest crowds in Hofstra Stadium history occurred during the hosting of the NCAA Lacrosse Quarterfinals. A crowd of 12,292, an NCAA men’s lacrosse championship quarterfinal record and the largest-ever lacrosse crowd on Long Island, witnessed the 1999 NCAA quarterfinals featuring Hofstra versus Johns Hopkins and Duke versus Georgetown, and 10,510 fans attended the 2001 quarterfinals that featured Hofstra against Syracuse.

So it comes close, but doesn't sell out when the home team faces off against arguably the 2 most successful programs in lacrosse history? It doesn't sound as if there's any geographical or capacity issue to me. In fact, it sounds like the rare case of geographical and capacity optimization on the part of the NCAA.

Why would a half-empty 20,000 seat stadium be better?

billhoward

Ronald '09
I remember there being plenty of empty seats in the corners when we were at Hofstra 2 years ago. If I recall the four teams were Cornell, Princeton, Maryland, and Syracuse. Hofstra making it that far would obviously help attendance, but I suspect 13,000 is still plenty of space. Announced attendance two years ago was approximately 11,200.

Personally, I thought Stony Brook was a great experience last year. Beautiful stadium. There may have been some people who wanted to come that didn't get tickets, but considering the standing room that probably wasn't the case. And a full house is fun, as long as you get a ticket. That wasn't a problem last year as long as you got your ticket within a few days after the first round.

Hofstra says the place has come close to selling out for lax: [www.gohofstra.com] >>> The two largest crowds in Hofstra Stadium history occurred during the hosting of the NCAA Lacrosse Quarterfinals. A crowd of 12,292, an NCAA men’s lacrosse championship quarterfinal record and the largest-ever lacrosse crowd on Long Island, witnessed the 1999 NCAA quarterfinals featuring Hofstra versus Johns Hopkins and Duke versus Georgetown, and 10,510 fans attended the 2001 quarterfinals that featured Hofstra against Syracuse.

One of us has faulty recall about last year's Stony Brook game. (If '09 is your grad year then odds are it'd be me.) Still, my recall is that no tickets were available day-of-game although there were some empty seats during the Cornell-Army game. If someone called Cornell week-of-game, Cornell said call Stony Brook ("they might have tickets", and Stony Brook said "no." Nice facility sized appropriately for SBU sports events? Yes. For NCAA lax on Long Island? Not big enough. The only people who got tickets at the stadium on game day were those who walked the lines, kept asking if anyone had extra tickets, and eventually somebody had bought four and only three showed up. On this I definitely agree with you: "And a full house is fun, as long as you get a ticket."

I don't think you said anything inconsistent with what I said. I said as long as you got tickets within a few days of the first round, it wasn't a problem. I got 3 tickets online on Monday or Tuesday last year. I'm pretty sure the general tickets on Stony Brook's website didn't sell out until late Tuesday or maybe Wednesday last year, so that's plenty of time to get a ticket while still waiting to find out if your team made it.

What we really should be talking about is how ridiculous an attendance around 12,000 will look at the other set of quarterfinals.

Right you are: The smaller crowd in New England will rattle around at the huge Patriots / Gillette Stadium. There'll be less tournout than at Hofstra b/c some southern school fans will opt not to make the longer trek: 550 miles from Virginia, 700 miles from Duke. I'm hazy on my seedings protocol for lax, but if Syracuse is the #1 seed then I think they'd get the preferable, closer location at Hofstra, which would place #2 and #3 up in Massachusetts and currently that's Notre Dame and Duke.

Wrong move: At a Stony Brook, as we saw, and marginally at Hofstra, the NCAA choice edges out the fan / family that decides on Friday: Looks as if it's going to be a nice weekend, the four of us will go see the game, let's hop in the Range Rover and motor on over to Hofstra. I think it would be nice if they could be able to see the game as well. Good of the game and all.

Ronald, I do recall the very nice, sunny standing room only (more like blankets and sunblock) area and thought that was a tremendous way to see nice regular season games. But I'm pretty sure SBU didn't sell day of game tickets for that, either. They could have sold more since you know X% of fans only stay for one game.

The real unknown is what teams are playing: Cornell playing on the Guyland provides a big fan turnout, followed by Cornell playing anywhere. Same thing last year when Stony Brook was in the tourney and played at SB. Hofsta (currently #10) could be the same way this year. If you host the tourney, you're seeded in the bracket with your home field. So if Cornell is not playing at Hofstra through bracket order or a miscue in the first round and if Hofstra isn't playing either, then there's plenty of room in a 13,000-seat stadium.