When I graduated from Princeton University in 2010, there was a strong feeling on campus that the school’s once dominant men’s lacrosse program was being left behind. Hall of Fame coach Bill Tierney had unexpectedly left for upstart Denver, and it had been six years since the team’s last semifinals appearance. The next year the Tigers won just four games for the first time since the 1980s.
If you’d asked me back then if Princeton would ever win another men’s lacrosse national title, I probably would have said no. The sport was expanding westward and far richer athletic departments were pushing resources into an endeavor they had previously left to a handful of bluebloods and elite Northeast private schools. College lacrosse was having a moment nationally, and it seemed only a matter of time until it looked more like football or men’s basketball, dominated by the wealthiest programs in the wealthiest conferences.
And for a while that thesis held. Princeton went to just one NCAA tournament from 2011-2021, after playing in 19 of the previous 21. In that dry spell, Michigan’s program transitioned from club to Division I in 2012, and the Big Ten formally added the sport in 2015. Penn State made its first semifinals in 2019, the same year Utah became the first Pac-12 school with a D-I men’s team. In 2020, Princeton attackman Michael Sowers, perhaps the best player in the country, was forced to transfer to another school (he chose Duke) because of the Ivy League’s rules against post-grad seasons.
