Lax Links 11-11-11

OMG LOOK AT THE DATE. ALL 1s!

Coachin’

Last night was Michigan’s second of four off-season coaching clinics, and there was a much better turnout this time around:

A small sampling of the clinic attendance

At the last clinic, there were about 15-20 coaches in attendance; this time I stopped counting at 67 (and a few more filtered in). Topics covered:

• Recruiting (head coach John Paul)
• Shooting (volunteer assistant Keith Euker)
• Man-up offense (assistant coach Judd Lattimore)
• Man-down defense (assistant coach Ken Broschart)

Again, it was a helpful experience – and I’m not a coach, just an interested observer – and I’d recommend it to any coaches in the state who want to help their programs reach the next level.

I may have scooped myself above, but the Wolverines have added former Missouri (MCLA) coach Keith Euker to the staff as a volunteer assistant. Like Lattimore (and Broschart), he brings a pedigree to the game for those who use the silly argument that John Paul can’t have success at the Division-1 level because he didn’t play varsity ball in college:

A native of Baltimore, Md., Euker played for Coach Dave Cottle at Loyola (Md.) University from 1995-98. As a senior, he helped the Greyhounds to a No. 1 national ranking and an appearance in the NCAA Final Four.

You may remember Euker from a minor internet war when Missouri’s team fired him earlier this fall. Of note from one of those posts (the one linked with “internet”):

We’ve had the pleasure of having Coach Euker on staff at our summer camp for the past two years.  He’s a very good coach, and an even better person.  I don’t know what happened at Missouri, but I have no doubt he’ll end up in another coaching position helping young men develop on and off the field. – John Paul, Michigan

Interesting.

Holland Christian has hired Andy Pawlkowski as their head boys coach. There are still a few openings in the state, including what seems to be a newly-available job at Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.

Recruiting

Check out the Signing Day post from yesterday for a rundown of expected commitments. It sounds like a few prospects have already signed, judging by local articles and/or tweets, but let’s wait for the press releases from the schools confirming their early signing classes.

Michigan’s coaches were among those taking in the Quaker LaxFest showcase event outside Philly last weekend.

Detroit

The Detroit women will be changing conference affiliations for the 2013 season, joining the Atlantic Sun Conference, along with current NLC conference-mates Jacksonville, Longwood, and Howard.

The Titan men spent a day working with Habitat for Humanity. They seem to do a lot of charity work in the offseason, which pays major dividends in the communities they’re helping, as well as from a team-building perspective.

MCLA

I missed this in the last Lax Links post, I believe, but MCLAFan checked in with Davenport a few weeks ago.

General Things

The Michigan Chapter of US Lacrosse is holding their Hall of Fame Celebration this Saturday. Click through for more details.

Mike Costello examines (in the Examiner, of all places!) what is wrong with lacrosse in the state of Michigan. Some of it (” Parents who lack backbone”) comes off as a little complain-y, but he makes salient points, as well:

Back in 2003, Brother Rice went to Maryland and beat Landon Prep out of Washington, D.C. The whole lacrosse community was talking about it. Michigan high school lacrosse was something. Enter the MHSAA in 2005 and that momentum came to a screeching halt. No more trips to Maryland and Michigan teams were prohibited from even playing in a tournament if a school from a non-neighboring state was playing.

I talked about a lot of these things in my summer series about the State of the State (part 2, part 3, part 4).

If you missed former Michigan player Pat Stansik‘s Inside Lacrosse posts, you can see the full lineup of them here.