La Roche Adds Men’s Lacrosse
Lacrosse, a sport that’s been steadily gaining in popularity in western Pennsylvania, is coming to La Roche College as a varsity sport in academic year 2010-2011. Athletic Director Jim Tinkey has announced the addition of men’s lacrosse coach Anthony Stamatopoulos, whose job is to build a team that will be ready to play next year.
Stamatopoulos comes to La Roche from Robert Morris University in Moon Township, Pa., where he served as director of operations – assistant coach. Prior to that, he was the head coach at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, following many years of coaching and playing lacrosse himself.
“Building a program from the ground up is a great opportunity,” he said. “Lacrosse is gaining in popularity because it combines skills from every sport – you can personalize it, it’s fast, it’s great to watch and it’s open to various sizes of players. Once you play, you’re hooked.”
“We will compete as an independent initially, which means there is not a championship within our conference at this point,” Tinkey explained. “But we are confident that this is an up-and-coming sport; we would need seven schools to sponsor men’s lacrosse in our conference to have an automatic bid to the NCAA championship tournament.”
La Roche is part of the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference in NCAA Division III. During the next two years, in addition to men’s lacrosse, La Roche is exploring the feasibility of introducing women’s lacrosse, Tinkey said.
“We’ve done some research, and we found that lacrosse is something prospective students want to play at the college level,” Tinkey said, adding that “we would need approximately 20 student athletes on our men’s lacrosse roster for the 2010-11 season.”
During the coming academic year, Tinkey said the college will evaluate locations for practice and playing fields.
For more information about the program, interested people should call the Athletics Office at 412-536-1001 or Coach Stamatopoulos at 412-926-0587.
(anthony.stamatopoulos@laroche.edu)
Editor’s Note: Watch for more on Coach Stamatopoulos in the next issue of La Roche Magazine.
