Experi T


A BAD


he more things change, the more they stay the same. Thirty-five years ago, segments of the men’s lacrosse world rallied for removing the part of the


game equivalent to the jump ball in basketball. Lacrosse needed to be faster and could do without a lengthy midfield scrum ensuing after every goal, two players raking or clamping and pushing and shoving to determine possession.


“There was a lot of dancing around,” Hall of


Fame official Fred Eisenbrandt said of the faceoff. “The ball was in play, but out of play in a sense.” There were problems before it started,


By Corey McLaughlin


like players taking longer than the allotted 30 seconds to sub in and out of the game, cheating or gaining an advantage (however you want to phrase it) and using trick sticks. A good faceoff man had too much importance, some said,


like when then-Johns Hopkins freshman Ned Radebaugh won 20 of 22 faceoffs in the Blue Jays’ 1978 NCAA championship game win over Cornell. That game drew 13,527 fans to Rutgers Stadium in New Jersey, a record at the time, and was broadcast by NBC. Lacrosse on TV was a new frontier, eliciting thoughts of expanding what was a niche sport to one with mass appeal. Could the game be better? The similarities to today are striking, except for one big


difference. It was 1979, the year without a faceoff. It happened. It really did. For one season only — and exclusively at the NCAA level — after a goal, the team that was scored on got possession automatically at midfield. A circle with a five-yard radius was drawn around an X at the


44 LACROSSE MAGAZINE August 2014>>


center of the field, and a player from the scored upon team started with the ball inside the half- circle on his end. He couldn’t go backward into the defensive zone, as not to delay the game, and no one from the defense could enter the circle, even after the whistle to restart play. What happened next was largely a non-event. “It wasn’t very exciting. You kind of walked the ball into play,


almost like bringing the ball up in basketball,” said Dave Huntley, the 1979 USILA Midfielder of the Year at Johns Hopkins and the deputized possession starter for the Blue Jays that season. “I don’t ever recall being double-teamed there. Nothing really happened. The idea that teams would play guys 50 yards from the goal was a bad bet.” Eliminating the faceoff also led to more substitutions and grinded game flow to a halt. With a team knowing beforehand it would play defense or offense, entire units were swapped in and out prior to play starting at midfield, thus leading to the same thing happening in the opposite direction after goals, saves or when the ball went out of bounds and a horn blew. It may have shortened games from the roughly two-plus hour


A Publication of US Lacrosse


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