average cited at the time, as was the intent, but a game without a faceoff was largely met with disapproval. It didn’t look good. Goalies stalled with the ball after a save until all of the proper offensive parts shuttled onto the field. Johns Hopkins fans, in an amended version of the post-goal chant that carries on today at Baltimore’s Homewood Field, yelled “One! Two! Three! … We want more… faceoffs!” A Sports Illustrated article from April 1979 declared, “The no-faceoff rule has shortened the game, but speeded up the controversy.”
REVIVE THE
DIVE?
Several organizations opted to retain the faceoff that same season, including high school leagues in Maryland and on Long Island, and the U.S. club lacrosse association. It was short-lived at the college level. The NCAA rules committee brought the faceoff back in 1980. When the decision was announced toward the end of the 1979 season at Homewood, the crowd erupted in cheers. “It was weird,” said current Denver coach Bill Tierney, the Hall of Famer who was then just getting started as a high school coach on Long Island. “It was just weird. It was an experiment that went awry.” The decision stemmed from a
If a shot clock is adopted (see opposite page) and theoretically helps defenses, could the dive be on its way back to give offenses another route to score? The NCAA banned the dive shot (without an attacking player being pushed from behind) in 1999, a move popularized in the mid-‘90s by the Virginia attack tandem of Michael Watson and Doug Knight. Safety, of the attackers and goalies, is a primary concern for keeping the play banned. “From a spectator
standpoint the dive is great, but it’s an unbelievably dangerous play and I wouldn’t vote to have that brought in,” Marquette coach Joe Amplo said. The pro and international levels allow for it, which eliminates what is possibly the toughest call in men’s lacrosse: did an attacker near the crease dive in it under his own will or was he pushed by a defender? It’s a possession-deciding play, equivalent to the charge- block dilemma in basketball. “It’s an impossible call for the officials,” Ohio State coach Nick Myers said, “and it’s almost impossible to defend. It’s almost like you can’t do anything because you’re going to get called for a push. But if you don’t push him or drive the attacker, he’s going to get to the front of the cage.” — C.M.
survey mailed to college coaches the season before. Sixty-two percent of coaches who responded voted to do away with the faceoff. But there was no majority on where the ball should be put back in play. The area behind the goal got the most votes and the midfield the fewest. The USILA rules committee, chaired at the time by Washington and Lee coach Jack Emmer, discussed the results and went with a compromise at the restraining line, which was their recommendation to the NCAA rules committee when it convened in June 1978. Fearing that weak teams would be unable to clear the ball from their own end against quality opponents, the NCAA committee chose midfield. Between them, the
rules
committees deliberated for more than 15 hours, according to one of the USILA advisory rules committee members, Caleb R. Kelly Jr., who wrote in the summer 1978 edition of Lacrosse Magazine, “Whether this decision will benefit the game of lacrosse only history can decide. Reason dictates that the lacrosse game will be speeded up by these innovations. So, those of you who strongly oppose elimination of faceoff after goals, bear with this change for one season of experimentation.” Plenty opposed. Then-UMBC athletic director Dick Watts and Navy coach Dick Szlasa organized an effort to overturn the rule, calling themselves “saviors of the faceoff.”
46 LACROSSE MAGAZINE August 2014>>
Szalsa accurately predicted the rampant offensive and defensive substitutions that came, and said, “There
Hall of Fame midfielder Dave Huntley started possessions for the Blue Jays in 1979.
are unique phases of the game that make it great. If you were to ask what part of the game spectators enjoyed at the Hopkins-Cornell game, it would be the faceoff.” Both called for a revote of USILA members before the season. Fast breaks would diminish, and the game’s momentum swings would be gone. How would a team trailing by few goals late in the game have a chance to make a comeback? “If the people who voted against the faceoff had known where the ball was going to be placed, most of them wouldn’t have voted the way they did,” Maryland coach Bud Beardmore told SI. The NCAA committee — chaired by Bowdoin coach Mort LaPointe and including Bowling Green coach Mickey Cochrane, Virginia athletic director Gene Corrigan, Adelphi coach Paul Doherty, Hobart coach Jerry Schmidt and Johns Hopkins athletic director Bob Scott — held a special meeting after the annual lacrosse convention in December 1978 to discuss reversing course. But they upheld the rule as written. All these years later, Emmer said the biggest mistake was the decision to start play at midfield after a goal, not the removal of the faceoff altogether.
“If we put the ball in on the back line after a goal, like in basketball, with no horn, I’m confident it would have worked out,” he said. “My opinion is it’s very difficult to take the faceoff out of the game. It’s a traditional part of the game, and creates a fast break, which is exciting. But it’s also been extremely frustrating to officiate. Every year, we tweak the faceoff a little bit to do what may be better… If they just take the ball out on the back line, even if they take it out from the goal, have another ball available, I think it would speed up the game and create a two-way middie. I do think eventually our game will come to this conclusion.” There were limited exceptions to the rule, relative to certain penalties, and a faceoff still started the game, each quarter and overtime. But otherwise, teams needed to rely on their half-field
A Publication of US Lacrosse
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