It was shortly after 12:30 p.m. when Paul Rabil, founding father of the Premier Lacrosse League, awarded the Maybelline Ladies’s Lacrosse League championship trophy to the Boston Guard after successful the grand ultimate of the WLL Championship Sequence.
In the course of the ceremony, he uttered a sentence. “I can’t wait to inform you what’s going to occur subsequent.”
A part of the conversations within the halls of the St. James facility in Springfield, Va. within the final week was about what was subsequent for skilled girls’s lacrosse. Would there be one other Sixes sequence? Will there be a 10-on-10 league like UWLX or Athletes Limitless? Is it slated to be 12-on-12 just like the WPLL?
And, most essential, when will it begin?
Bulletins a couple of new league are sooner or later, I’m certain. However by the facility invested in me as one of many few individuals to have witnessed professional girls’s lacrosse from its 2016 begin up till immediately, we’re providing you with, the reader, what we expect is a reasoned plan for the WLL for a full startup.
So, what are we planning on right here? I feel we’re finally going to see eight groups, identical to within the Premier Lacrosse League. I feel it will likely be 10-v-10, and can be a roaming feast of video games — doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday in areas of the nation the place ladies’ and girls’s lacrosse is keenly adopted and the place there are some good-sized stadia for followers.
I don’t see makes an attempt at filling deal with soccer stadiums beginning in 12 months 1, however as an alternative going for mid-sized soccer and lacrosse-specific stadiums.
The eight markets the place I feel WLL might, and may, go are as follows:
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Chicago
Colorado
California
Florida
I feel the eight groups must also mirror the websites of weekend competitors. It could be glib to attempt to fill giant stadiums with WLL crowds, however what has to occur is to hit a candy spot, someplace in direction of the smaller finish of the newer “area of interest” stadiums that are being constructed across the nation for area hockey, lacrosse, and soccer.
There are a whole lot of nice amenities that seat lower than 4,000 and would wish extra added seating so as to have the ability to host bigger crowds. It’s due to this fact a tough ask to determine eight good amenities, however we expect we have now some good locales for our eight groups:
Boston: Nickerson Discipline. This historic stadium has been downsized within the final quarter-century and now holds round 10,000. I feel this beats out Harvard and Boston School for one of the best out there facility for a nascent girls’s league.
New York: James Shuart Stadium, Hempstead. This 12,000-seater has been an excellent host for NCAA males’s regional lacrosse video games through the years, and is true close to the Hempstead LIRR station.
Philadelphia: Tomlinson-Fillippo Discipline at Farrell Stadium, West Chester. The host of the 1989 Ultimate 4, this stadium seats round 7,500.
Baltimore: Homewood Discipline. There are a whole lot of locations which might have a WLL facet, however Homewood is the ancestral dwelling for the sport in the US. And it’s simply the fitting dimension, seating about 8,500.
Chicago: SeatGeek Stadium, Bridgeview. With the Chicago Hearth taking part in its video games at Soldier Discipline, the soccer-specific stadium now has just one soccer group, the Stars, calling it dwelling. It has 20,000 seats.
Colorado: Dick’s Sporting Items Park, Commerce Metropolis. Whereas we’d like to have Barton Stadium at Denver College be the host, its capability is just 2,000. The house of the Colorado Rapids could possibly be an excellent locale, though we notice that Denver’s future NWSL facet is getting its personal park
California: BMO Stadium, Los Angeles. This park, dwelling of LAFC in Main League Soccer, has a capability of about 22,000, and we needed to decide this one as a result of we all know there can be a whole lot of work being executed within the space of Dignity Well being Sports activities Park due to the 2028 Olympics.
Florida: Inter&Co Stadium, Orlando. It’s within the bigger echelon of stadiums in our thought experiment, and it could be tough to get video games in throughout a summer time schedule due to the subtropical climate. However it would draw followers.
Now, a part of a brand new out of doors league goes to be the identities of the eight groups. We’ve thought-about the historical past of lacrosse, each males’s and girls’s, to bestow nicknames names on the eight groups. Right here’s the product we’re proposing to go on the sector:
Boston Guard: This impressed nickname will endlessly be within the lore of girls’s lacrosse as the primary winner of the MWLL Championship Sequence.
New York Combat: Positive, having a group named Lengthy Island Sound can be an excellent throwback to the UWLX days, however the New York Combat was an excellent title out of the WPLL. And, just like the MWLL’s New York Charging, the Combat had the identical shade of sunshine blue within the 2018 season.
Philadelphia Drive: One of many names of the unique 4 UWLX sides, the group received the third league title in 2018.
Baltimore Trip: I feel this was the best title of any of the professional girls’s sides within the UWLX, given the truth that the nickname is a lacrosse-specific tactic for a urgent midfield protection.
Chicago Machine: This was an MLL nickname, however when you realize the ladies’s lacrosse historical past of the world, you perceive the machine-like precision of the Northwestern girls’s program because it holds eight NCAA titles.
Colorado Command: Using the WPLL’s New England moniker from the previous league is a pure to make an alliterave group identification.
California Palms: Not solely was this an excellent title throughout the Maybelline Ladies’s Lacrosse League, however an excellent group identification with the multicolored numbers on the again of the shirts. It will work regardless of the place the Palms play within the state.
Florida Launch: One of many nice nicknames and identities of Main League Lacrosse, this title would mirror the area trade.
How do you assume a brand new girls’s professional out of doors league will look?
