As much as this site has been chronicling excellence in lacrosse over the last quarter-century, we have also seen a lot of institutional failures, especially in the post-COVID era of college sports.
We’ve seen a number of small Division II and III colleges not only axe their women’s lacrosse teams, but we’ve seen some schools, like Wesley College and Limestone, close altogether.
We were hoping to see at least one team return to the field this spring, the Lyndon campus of Vermont State University. The team, with nine student-athletes, played a grand total of two games last year before cancelling its season. Regrettably, it looks like Lyndon is not returning this spring.
Two weeks ago, it was announced that Whittier College, a small liberal-arts school near Los Angeles, would be suspending its season — barely three weeks before it would have begun its Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference season.
You have to feel for the player pool at Whittier, which were looking to improve after their 0-13 season through fall-ball and winter training, but now find themselves without a season.
The rest of the SCIAC, including the likes of Pomona-Pfitzer and the University of the Redlands, will continue on. But the closure of the Whittier program comes only a couple of years before the Olympics come to Los Angeles, which is only five miles from campus.
It’s not a good look.