‘Challenges and pain’: The Ivy League is back in the game

From left, Isaiah Dawson, Kyle Mullin, Chalie Olmert and Sam King of Harvard are poised for a return to the field. (Dave Arnold/NELJ)

Editor’s note: This story appears in the November-December issue of New England Lacrosse Journal.

This isn’t a story about the pandemic. At least, not directly.

It’s important to make that distinction because the proliferation of those types of stories are the opposite of what we all want to read. This is a story about the future of one of the most historically important leagues in Division 1 lacrosse: the Ivy League.

Now, by the same token as the opening statement, very few D-1 programs were disappointed to see the Ivy League forgo regular competition last spring.

After all, four of the league’s seven teams — Yale, Cornell, Princeton and Penn — were ranked in or around the top 20 going into the 2020 season.

So, yes, a hole was left, largely unacknowledged, in the lacrosse landscape when the Ivy League announced that it would not be engaging in conference play before the start of the 2021 season.

Ivy League teams and coaches had a lot of decisions to make after that announcement. Not just on how to handle the disappointment of it, but how to better their program internally.

Some did their best to find outside competition regardless of where it was coming from. Dartmouth, for one, did its level best to arrange outside competition and turned to other divisions to get it, going so far as to schedule a game against Division 3 power Tufts. The Big Green also scrimmaged fellow New Hampshire program St. Anselm, a Division 2 team that had the best season in the history of the program last spring.

While the Big Green split those contests, losing to Tufts and beating St. Anselm, the experience was a culmination of the team’s work up to that point.

“When you look back, we had the most amount of practice and we played the most amount of exhibitions out of any team in the league,” said Dartmouth head coach Brendan Callahan. “Once those (scrimmages) were done, we were able to practice because of our school calendar until Memorial Day. Once things opened up for us, we were really able to take advantage of it and you can see that — especially this year in the fall.”

Brown, a team on a similar trajectory to Dartmouth, was able to keep the majority of its players on campus for the bulk of the season. As a result, it was able to play an out-of-conference game against Boston University at the end of the season. It was a game that meant more to the program than just a singular win.

“I think that it shows the challenges — really, the pain — that we went through getting games scheduled,” said Brown head coach Mike Daly. “We took great pride in playing that game and I think our guys really felt it in hindsight. We had every player on campus and we were better for it. Their love of each other, and their love of Brown, just really galvanized that decision to give it every effort we could to play.”

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While Brown and Dartmouth were able to actually play games in 2021, other teams had no choice but to progress their program in different ways — often internally, with and without members of the team on campus.

“When people look at a college lacrosse coach they expect that you coach most of your time,” said Cornell head coach Connor Buczek. “The reality is that, even in a normal year, a significant portion of your time is not on the field. With that being said, we did very little on the field. We had guys all over the place, so the most challenging part of that was keeping our group together.

“It was managing morale, managing the psyches of 18- to 22-year-old young men that were dealing with loss and grief adding on the loss of the season.”

For some, paranoia is the most effective weapon in their arsenal. Not necessarily of other teams, but of the specter of their own past successes. What happens when you’re not tested by external forces? How much focus do you lose? How do you measure yourself when you are the stick?

“I’m paranoid that our identity has evaporated and our culture has evaporated,” said Yale head coach Andy Shay. “We’re constantly trying to make sure that it hasn’t (and) that’s not based on any evidence. That’s just, I think, that fear and paranoia that it’s going to go away are what helps you sustain it.

“We spend a lot of the time in the office during the pandemic talking about that and helping guys understand what it’s about. One of the things I’m a little worried about is that game experience matters a lot in terms of building that kind of culture. How do you react to being down a few goals? That’s the big thing. The big unknown for me is that without game experience or understanding how they’re going to react in a game, we won’t really have the evidence that the culture is there.

“Similarly, with these new coaches, these other programs … they could get a hard reset. They can be whoever they want to be right now, whatever they pull off. When you play a team last year, if you beat them, you can rely on that bully mentality a little bit. None of these guys have any recollection of the last time we beat a team by, let’s say, seven goals. None of these guys have any recollection of that. It’s a new league. It’s a new day and we will see what happens. So, that’s not lost on me. That’s definitely something I think about.”

Gerry Byrne was hired as Harvard’s head coach on July 1, 2019, and is in a unique situation, having coached a total of four games since then, all during the 2020 season that was shortened by the pandemic.

Prior to Harvard, Byrne was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame, where he was known for instilling an unshakeable work ethic into his players. That sort of blue-collar mentality is what he brings to Harvard, which may sound antithetical given the Ivy League’s stature in other arenas.

“This is not your grandfather’s Ivy League,” noted Byrne. “I live in the North End — I want to be close to the school. I want to be in the city. I want to have a feeling, to have a feel for Boston, as a New Yorker. I wanted to understand the history of Boston. So, I live right where it all started.”

What is the same for all the coaches is the knowledge that winning the Ivy League tournament still guarantees a spot in the NCAAs.

“When I got my internet setup, I had to make an Internet password,” said Byrne. “So I made it ‘ILTT2022’ — Ivy League Tournament Title 2022.”

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There will certainly be adjustments and growing pains going into 2022. After all, every Ivy League team has the same problem — it’s operating with what amounts to three new classes with limited experience. Only the seniors on these squads have the experience of a full season under their helmets.

“It puts a lot of pressure on the seniors,” said Penn head coach Mike Murphy. “Fortunately, we have a strong senior class. The junior class, they went through the process. They went through the fall. They played five games. So, they haven’t played a full season, but they’ve experienced more of a season than they’ve missed, so to speak.

“You’re teaching a lot: ‘Here’s how we clear. Here’s how we slide.’ At least half the team that’s coming in is completely blind to some of these things. … We had one guy missing (last spring). So, we might be in a different position than some of these other Ivy League teams because we practiced all spring. In 30-plus years of doing this, it’s the most improvement I’ve ever seen in a semester with any team. The only thing to do is get better at all and have fun. That was our goal. I think we accomplished that.”

Any adjustment period for Ivy League teams has been made a bit easier to stomach thanks to a fall season. After all, getting back into a rhythm is what fall ball is all about. However, for some coaches, it’s like going back to the gym after a long layoff. The coaching muscles atrophy with time, too.

“It’s been an adjustment for me, an adjustment for everybody,” said Shay. “But to be honest, we would practice and then I would realize that I forgot things and that we forgot to do things.

“It’s a lot of the same faces, but it’s a completely new makeup of a roster. You know, your leadership structure is changing and we have guys that barely played at all their sophomore year now thrust into serious leadership roles. It was like coming out of a time machine — ‘Where are we here? What are we? What are we doing? And why?’ I look at how much losing a year affected my rhythm as a coach and it was not nothing. It was something. I didn’t feel comfortable in a huddle. Maybe people wouldn’t notice or didn’t notice, but it just felt very foreign for most of the fall.”

The challenges are many. The concerns are innumerable. But the talent is undoubtedly there on all of these rosters. The Ivy League may be going through a bit of an identity crisis, but the danger is in underestimating any of these teams. Maybe this won’t be a year where four of the seven Ivy League teams are in the top 20. But that doesn’t matter. Rankings are subjective; wins are not. The Ivy League’s spot in the NCAA tournament is still there.

“Even though the first 30 or so months have not been linear, or allowed me to do the kind of things that I would have hoped to have done … I haven’t changed my WiFi password,” said Byrne. “That’s my mentality. We make our league tournament. We’ve got to win two games. That’s the goal. Same goal.”

@TheKyleDevitte
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