Stealth support still a sore spot
Lacrosse fans should have no trouble filling LEC, but they don’t
Asports reporter walks into a bar.
Fellow patron knows him. Fellow patron is a lacrosse fan. Fellow patron hassles him about the lack of coverage for the Minto Cup, Canada’s Junior A club championship tournament.
Reporter puts his hand up. Patron pauses. Reporter asks how many Vancouver Stealth games he’s been to. Patron pauses. He’s been to three over the three winters the National Lacrosse League team has been playing at the Langley Events Centre, he says.
That’s the punch line. And no, it’s not the least bit funny.
Lacrosse people regularly talk about the need to support their sport. They could have a patent on #growthegame on social media.
If lacrosse’s popularity is going to skyrocket, it needs to get on national television regularly. The only way lacrosse gets on national TV regularly is via the NLL. The only way the NLL gets on national TV regularly is with successful franchises from east to west, including places like Metro Vancouver. You see what we’re getting at? Lacrosse doesn’t have an image problem. It has a lack of awareness problem. It needs the mass appeal of TV. You want lacrosse to succeed, you need the Vancouver Stealth to succeed.
There are flaws with the franchise. They were a combined 14-40 over their first three years based out of the LEC, missing the playoffs each campaign.
You can see many of the same players you see at a NLL game for cheaper in the summer at a Western Lacrosse Association game. The parking at the LEC can be a pain and Langley can seem like a long haul for people in Vancouver.
You can question that why, in a hotbed of lacrosse like the Lower Mainland, the Stealth have to import coach Jamie Batley from Peterborough, Ont. And for lacrosse to grow, there’s a school of thought that teams like the Stealth need to attract non-lacrosse fans. All fair comment, we suggest. The greatest truth of all, though, is that the Lower Mainland has enough people who should give a darn about lacrosse that the Stealth should have zero trouble filling the LEC with 5,000 fans a game.
The Stealth averaged 3,758 fans a night last year at the LEC, which lists capacity at 5,276. The nineteam league averaged 9,152 with four teams over the 10,000 mark, highlighted by the 15,833 per night watching the Buffalo Bandits.
The plus side this year for the Stealth is that they’re off to a 2-0 start for the first time since moving to the LEC from Everett, Wash., and, by various accounts, Batley is pushing an aggressive, uptempo style on both offence and defence that should be attractive to fans.
They won both ends of a tricky weekend road doubleheader in Calgary and Colorado despite missing two of their more celebrated offensive players, Garrett Billings (groin) and Cory Conway (shoulder), to injury.
There’s reason to give it a look, one would think, starting with Saturday’s home opener against the Calgary Roughnecks. It’s up to you, of course. If you care about lacrosse, though, you need to understand the consequences.
That’s no joke.