Archive for March 9, 2012
March 9, 2012 — The wrong measure
Today’s Game of the Day
Coronado (Calif.) at San Diego Cathedral Catholic (Calif.)
The 2012 season begins right where the 2011 season ended — with the same two teams who played the CIF San Diego Section title game. Last year, the Coronado Islanders won the game and is a favorite to repeat. This game will go a long way in shaping the course of the season.
This year, according to this story, one girls’ lacrosse team in the highly competitive mid-Atlantic region is wearing rugby helmets. That school is Potomac Bullis School (Md.), and the measure is being taken after nine members of its team suffered concussions a year ago.
Such a measure, frankly, constitutes shutting the barn door after all of the horses have been let out, given the new carding procedures that are in place in scholastic lacrosse, where a third yellow card means that a team plays short the rest of the game.
But what it also means is that, regrettably, many of Bullis’ opponents last year either did not learn the proper way to stick-check, or members of the Bullis team were not being called for illegally cradling close to the head.
It was 17 years ago when Massachusetts high schools started mandating soft helmets, and the scholarship value of many student-athletes went down. Defenders were not using their feet to play defense, but were reaching with their sticks, knowing that their wild swings were not going to hurt their opponents.
I’ll be interested to see if the same thing happens here.
