Hobart 2024

[Laxbuck]

Miserable day. Cool bar across the street to pregame.
Shea got worked early allowing SJU to get out to an early lead. Had Wilson not played well it would have been over in the first half. 14 saves in the first half kept Hobart in it. 2 late 2nd Q goals were big. Didn’t see any quit in Hobart. They played hard for 4 quarters. Hawks usually expose Hobart’s SSDMs. Not so today. Beat High Point next week and A-10 tourney still in play.

[Ketch]

So we're all in agreement that this season has run its course?

[Laxgunea]

So we're all in agreement that this season has run its course?

No ... I want Lucy to hold that football for me one more time for HPU.
As they say, the fat lady hasn't sung, but I can hear her warming up.

[brodad]

So we're all in agreement that this season has run its course?

Siena just scored 4 goals in 44 seconds, so you never know.

[Laxbuck]

HP is a winnable game

[Bartfromboston]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

[oldbartman]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

You mean some guys who have 3 or 4 national championship rings?

[LIfan92]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

You mean some guys who have 3 or 4 national championship rings?

Yea when they were division 3 and not nearly as many college programs. Respect the old teams and players who were unbelievable, but you can’t compare success now to the past.

[10stone5]

You can't just discount history.
People make that mistake contantly.

Hobart is one of the oldest programs around, with more National Titles than all but two other schools.
6th all time in program wins.

[Laxgunea]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

You mean some guys who have 3 or 4 national championship rings?

Yea when they were division 3 and not nearly as many college programs. Respect the old teams and players who were unbelievable, but you can’t compare success now to the past.

The D3 part really had nothing to do with it, since they were playing and beating D1 teams too. But the "not as many college programs" part is spot on. Also, the nature of the game has changed. These days you just can't take a great athlete who has never held a stick before and turn him into a solid defenseman in two years. The rosters are bigger and players are much more specialized. IMHO, it has hurt the sport, but no one asked me. I've been waiting for the NCAA to call for my opinion, but no luck yet.
We got shafted by the NCAA when they prohibited us from playing extra-divisional games. Then the prohibition on athletic scholarships hurt us. This year's season is all of that playing out, plus the problems with our own coaching staff and players. As others have pointed out, we have had extra difficulty recruiting, and the whole 5th year/COVID year mess hurt us more than others because our grad program is so young and we've lost players to other more established and better grad programs. Plus the portal system has messed us up: our coach doesn't use it. While I respect and agree with his philosophy about it, I think it restricts recruiting in an unhelpful way (at the same time, I am not sure how many people we would attract from the portal in any case).
I support these guys and want them to do well, but the record tells the story. Hobart is a great school, but it is facing tough times like all other northeast small liberal arts schools. And since we didn't traditionally have a large endowment (darned Episcopal priests weren't great givers!), the higher education downturn has taken its toll on Hobart harder than in other places.
Any players reading our comments should turn off the computer, get a bucket of balls, and do some shooting drills. Or play wall ball. Or have some college fun.

[10stone5]

Reported lacrosse expenditures, as a comparison - Syracuse is well over $3MM per year.
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hobart.jpg (68.04 KiB) Viewed 438 times

[leafybeef]

Reported lacrosse expenditures, as a comparison - Syracuse is well over $3MM per year.
___________________________________
hobart.jpg

That will jump as scholarships are factored into that. Once you hopefully become fully funded you will be able to add 1-1.5 million to that.

[oldbartman]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

You mean some guys who have 3 or 4 national championship rings?

Yea when they were division 3 and not nearly as many college programs. Respect the old teams and players who were unbelievable, but you can’t compare success now to the past.

LIfan92, a bit of history lesson for you. In the 1970s it was a combined division II & III championship with schools such as Towson, Adelphi, UMBC etc all competing for the championship. Hobart won the combined title in '76 and '77, lost it in '78. During my time there, we bear Syracuse all 4 years. We topped that off with a 16-4 win over Cuse in '79 That Cuse team had 5 AAs on it. So before you go insulting an historical program, do a little work....

[10stone5]

That '72 team was a killer also.

In the old Laxpower days, Rick Gilbert came on line for a little Q&A.
I believe that is him from Hobart's web site,
444 Career points, astounding !
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gilbert.jpg (25.11 KiB) Viewed 325 times

[oldbartman]

That '72 team was a killer also.

In the old Laxpower days, Rick Gilbert came on line for a little Q&A.
I believe that is him from Hobart's web site,
444 Career points, astounding !
________________________________________
gilbert.jpg

Rick used a wood stick his whole career. If I remember correctly, STX came out with their 1st plastic head in 72 of 73. Rick Said in an interview (paraphrasing it) I wonder how much I would have scored had I switched?"

[Farfromgeneva]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

You mean some guys who have 3 or 4 national championship rings?

Yea when they were division 3 and not nearly as many college programs. Respect the old teams and players who were unbelievable, but you can’t compare success now to the past.

What about experience and knowledge?

[Farfromgeneva]

For the players that might be reading our comments - we are just a bunch of old dudes who remember ourselves as being better than we were. The season is your control. Hip Hobart!

You mean some guys who have 3 or 4 national championship rings?

Yea when they were division 3 and not nearly as many college programs. Respect the old teams and players who were unbelievable, but you can’t compare success now to the past.

The D3 part really had nothing to do with it, since they were playing and beating D1 teams too. But the "not as many college programs" part is spot on. Also, the nature of the game has changed. These days you just can't take a great athlete who has never held a stick before and turn him into a solid defenseman in two years. The rosters are bigger and players are much more specialized. IMHO, it has hurt the sport, but no one asked me. I've been waiting for the NCAA to call for my opinion, but no luck yet.
We got shafted by the NCAA when they prohibited us from playing extra-divisional games. Then the prohibition on athletic scholarships hurt us. This year's season is all of that playing out, plus the problems with our own coaching staff and players. As others have pointed out, we have had extra difficulty recruiting, and the whole 5th year/COVID year mess hurt us more than others because our grad program is so young and we've lost players to other more established and better grad programs. Plus the portal system has messed us up: our coach doesn't use it. While I respect and agree with his philosophy about it, I think it restricts recruiting in an unhelpful way (at the same time, I am not sure how many people we would attract from the portal in any case).
I support these guys and want them to do well, but the record tells the story. Hobart is a great school, but it is facing tough times like all other northeast small liberal arts schools. And since we didn't traditionally have a large endowment (darned Episcopal priests weren't great givers!), the higher education downturn has taken its toll on Hobart harder than in other places.
Any players reading our comments should turn off the computer, get a bucket of balls, and do some shooting drills. Or play wall ball. Or have some college fun.

1986 schedule

Hopkins
OWU
Loyola
Geneseo
wash college
St Lawrence
Ithaca
Cortland
Syracuse
Cornell
Penn State
Rit
Hofstra

So 6/13 games weee against D1. That’s every year basically in
The 80s. 86 was a particularly good year but they went 5-1 vs those 6.

[Farfromgeneva]

Reported lacrosse expenditures, as a comparison - Syracuse is well over $3MM per year.
___________________________________
hobart.jpg

That will jump as scholarships are factored into that. Once you hopefully become fully funded you will be able to add 1-1.5 million to that.

12.5 x 80,000 is $1mm

It’ll be like 5-6yrs before we are there. And unclear on what the sharply covers total costs today is low mid 70s fully loaded but I doubt that would all be spent by scholly.

The question becomes, specious your program and circumstance, does buying some kids and the money inherently get Hobart more wins via talent? Or does it require an effective or intelligent allocation of thiae dollars? (Beyond random injury risk). Or does it matter who’s spending that money as to how much if at all it even fits the program. $1mm is sadly a lot of either our endowment or vowels operating budget. Not to be taken as an abstraction and pissed away .

[Laxbuck]

Serious question, not trolling. What caused the decline in Hobart lacrosse? Was it that the sport went from regional to national and the good Hobart guys were now going to Duke/UNC/ND/Ohio St/Denver etc?

[Farfromgeneva]

Serious question, not trolling. What caused the decline in Hobart lacrosse? Was it that the sport went from regional to national and the good Hobart guys were now going to Duke/UNC/ND/Ohio St/Denver etc?

Here’s the rough formula that gets a low-ish R squared error rate:


This: https://hwsathletics.com/honors/hall-of ... l-hanna/84

+

(Not staying D1 rather that this was a story at all)
https://www.syracuse.com/orangelacrosse ... visio.html

+

https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-con ... statement/

+ (18yrs of rejections of numerous appeals to offer scholarships since moving up)
https://hwsathletics.com/news/2022/1/22 ... ships.aspx

+

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gearan

Parenthesis to multiply the above by the introduction of Richmond and BU and improvement in Colgate and OsU (Alex love is one of many examples I the first 10-15yrs of D1 where our closest comp was OSU).

That gets you 95% of the way there. Add a dash of bad coaching in various ways which really honestly covers all our D1 coaches: BJ and Matt are fun guys and ways to like but coaching? TW fat out quit and I understand why.