As long as the club lacrosse feature was, it could have been a healthy 1,000 words longer. Lots of stuff to sort through here, I’m disappointed I couldn’t fit it all in. The guys were pretty happy to get some press, and I can’t blame them. They’re also committed – I watched them practice for two hours while doing interviews, and they’re going just about every day this week in preparation for the conference tournament.

And as committed as they are to UW, they’re also pretty aware of what’s going on elsewhere in the nation. Cutshall has family that goes to Michigan, which is on the verge of becoming just the third Big Ten school to field a Division I lacrosse team. The Wolverines squad is getting its own practice facility, and the completion is set to coincide with that probable move to DI. Apparently, Oregon gets plenty of cash from the school as well for its MCLA team. The Badgers can’t even use the McClain facility in the winter.

Here are some extra bits that I couldn’t jam into the feature.

-Wisconsin finished third in its division, behind Illinois and Lindenwood. UW faces Iowa in the first round of the GRLC playoffs, but could face both Lindenwood and UI in the semifinals or finals. The Badgers fell to the Lions 4-22 and lost in the closing minutes to the Illini, 7-8.

-The Badgers could have tried to join the Upper Midwest Lacrosse League, but opted for the Great Rivers Lacrosse Conference because four Big Ten teams play in it – Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Purdue. Minnesota is the only Big Ten school in the UMLL, which is also home to Marquette, UW-Stevens Point and Minnesota-Duluth, among others.

-The only Big Ten schools with DI programs are Ohio State and Penn State.

-UW beat in-state rivals Marquette, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Stevens Point by a combined score of 54-11.

-The Badgers also beat the rival Gophers 12-11.

-There are 213 MCLA teams in the two divisions. NCAA lacrosse has just 61 Division I programs on the men’s side, as well as 33 DII and 131 DIII teams.

The MCLA operates much like the NCAA, but obviously only concerning lacrosse programs. According to Cutshall, the eligibility, credit and GPA requirements are the same in the MCLA as the NCAA. Apparently, one of the only differences is the NCAA requires a minimum size for numbers on jerseys, for TV purposes. That’s not such a worry for the MCLA.

Additional quotes:

Head coach George Counes:

There’s not a lot of college lacrosse in the country at the moment, everything exists mainly in the Northeast. There’s a lot of lacrosse talent, and the sport’s growing kind of faster than the infrastructure can hold it.

I suppose the more support we get from the student body, then the university has to pay attention and the university will hand us more support; it’s just a slow process.

With the NatUp vote going down, that was a hard hit for us, because it would have provided us a field indoors, a full field indoors, it would have given us a home field and a practice facility. We’re just going to keep chugging along and doing what we have to do.

This is as much a first-year program as any other first-year program, competing in a league that is a lot different, that competes differently, that travels differently. We’re going through a lot of the pitfalls and the ups and downs of a first year program. As we learn from our mistakes, we can only get better and that’s how we build a long-standing, quality program.

Junior Matt Cutshall

You look at some of our rival schools, schools like Michigan or Illinois, and they do have a full-on recruiting of lacrosse players who could go Division I or Division III. Now that we can do that too, to see the potential that we have, to just go out there and start to really be a good representative of the university.

That’s why I’m so happy we did so well this year, that we’ve really been able to prove to our internal critics, as well as our external critics… how ready and we were for this.She was at the pregame, and I ended up just randomly sitting next to her, and I was like, ‘So, do you know anything about lacrosse?’ And she said, ‘Heck yeah, I went to Cornell, I’ve been talking to Barry and Pat Richter about that since I got here.’

I thought that was a really positive sign, to talk to her and be able to see… that we do have support from the top. Hopefully that will translate into moving the process – if we’ve done a good job of starting it, hopefully with the support of the administration and club sports, then they can accelerate it as well.

The best thing for me at least, is not just the national recognition. At Minnesota we had this and I was a first-team all conference player as a freshman. I didn’t really care about that stuff, I cared about being able to have a team that actually hung out and wanted to be really good friends with each other.

We don’t want to say ‘they’re not doing anything,’ we don’t want to make them look bad. The truth is, we need more help from the school if we’re going to become – if they just want us to be just a regular top-25 competitor, then we can probably do that with the support we’re doing. But if they want to get us a chance to win national titles…

Freshman Nick Klevay

Why would I ever join a fraternity when I’m on the lacrosse team. The first month of school, I suddenly knew 30 kids.

I know freshmen coming in here, that are like ‘you play lacrosse? I’ve played lacrosse for four years, I didn’t know anything about the club team here.’ If we would publicize about how good we actually are, there are a lot of lacrosse players at this school still who would probably love to play.

Senior Marcus Holzer