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By Maggie Hannon |
The UP Men’s Lacrosse Facebook page is flooded with posts, from updates about games, “under the helmet” player profiles to photos from their games and early morning practices. The team is pushing to inform their followers about anything and everything lacrosse. The University of Portland men’s club lacrosse team will play their first game of the season against the University of Montana this Saturday at 1 p.m on Prusynski Pitch.
Since being established in 2008, the club gets girlfriends or family members showing up to games but has not had a large fan following in their five years as a team. They hope for a growing student fanbase this year.“It would be really cool to have that support because it means our team is definitely gaining a following within the University, which is what we’ve been building towards the last few years,” said junior midfielder and club treasurer Nolan Ripple.
Junior midfielder and club president Chris Timm hopes to see more students coming out to support them for games, especially the big ones.
“It’s always nice to have fans at the games. We don’t always have that,” Timm said. “We played a game against OSU and they had far more fans than we did so that was kind of embarrassing because we were at home.”
The club hopes to use their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages to promote the team and create a larger fanbase.
“That’s one thing we’ve really been building this year to try and bring support to our team,” Ripple said. “We have a Twitter page and a UP men’s lacrosse page on Facebook, which is really big, I think we have 400 likes on that now. We try to update all our games and information on that site.”
The lacrosse club’s vice-president and defender, Sean Gunn, created the Facebook page last year and is also responsible for both the Instagram and Twitter pages for the club.
“We didn’t really have a thing for other people to look at and know that we actually have games,” Gunn said. “There is a website for the league that we are in but unless you are actively playing lacrosse, most people don’t know about it. I started the Facebook page as a way to get a connection between those two disconnected groups.”
The main goal for the club this season is to compete at the national level for their first time. They have made the playoffs, but lost to the same competitor, Western Oregon, in recent years.
“It’s kind of been our goal to make the national championship the last couple years and we’ve been just short,” Ripple said. “Last year we lost in the PNCLL championship game to Western Oregon by two goals. This year it’s about trying to build on that and actually win it so we can go to the national tournament.”
With a 13-3 record last season and three playoff showings in the last three years, the club is making the necessary improvements to make the national tournament. Although they may have come up short in the past, they think they have the experience and ability to make it this year. They are currently ranked at 18th in the nation for the Division 2 MCLA Coaches Poll for this year.
The club has lost to Western Oregon in their last three playoff appearances. They are the team’s toughest competition this season.
“Western Oregon is definitely the team to beat. We have done it before so we know we can but it’s just a matter of going out and doing it now,” Timm said.
Since the fields are used by other teams during the day, the club does not get to practice at an ideal time. The lacrosse team gets the field three days a week and on Wednesdays and they usually have to practice at 6 a.m.
“We usually practice when it’s dark: whether it’s in the morning or at night. That is kind of the way it is because the other NCAA teams have priority, which they should,” Ripple said.
Also since the team has so few practices a week, they need to use the time they have in order to stay competitive in their league.“We don’t have too many practice times so we need to make use of the ones that we do have. A lot of the other programs we go against have practice four or five times a week. So in order to stay competitive we need to utilize the practices that we do have,” Gunn said.
Despite this obstacle, the players are motivated to meet their goals, hopefully in front of a larger student fan base.
“We have a lot of fun games this year. We play seven home games and only four away games so there’s a lot of chances for students to come support us and we’d love to have that” Ripple said.
