Biola Lacrosse 2008

This has been a fantastic year for Biola Lacrosse. The boys had an excellent record and ended up winning the Division 2 Championship down in San Diego against UC Santa Cruz. There was an issue with eligibility for one of Biola's players that was discovered the Friday before the championship game, which unfortunately disqualified them from going to Nationals in Texas (and, technically, cost them the Division 2 title), but it was still a phenomenal season.

This was my brother Ben's final season, and he went out with a bang. He racked up 99 total points for the season, 48 goals and 51 assists. (That's counting non-league games. Click here to see the Div 2 rankings. Look at all the Biola players near the top!) Ben earned Offensive Player of the Year for Div 2 West Coast, made MCLA DIVISION 2 ALL-AMERICA FIRST TEAM, and tied for the highest scorer of the year. He assisted and scored in two sudden-death overtime victories (against Pepperdine and Dominican). My brother Josh acted as coach again this year as well. Needless to say, I'm quite proud of my brothers.

The issue regarding eligibility was this: one of the players dropped a class that took him below 12 units, which meant he was no longer a full-time student and thus ineligible to play. Unfortunately, he either forgot or wasn't aware of this, and he played 5 games like this. It never would have affected the team if they hadn't gone to play-offs and needed to resubmit their eligibility forms. Like I mentioned, they discovered this only a few days before the championship game. They could have not mentioned it and hoped that the WCLL did not find out, but they did the honorable thing and came forward on their own. The WCLL said they appreciated this, but still took the title away from them and disqualified them from Nationals. I know rules are rules, but it was 1 unit, the guy who was ineligible wasn't some ringer from the the East Coast, and the team had such a great year. The team was completely within the spirit of the law, but the letter had to be followed. It's disappointing.

It was a lot of fun watching the team this year. While Ben is graduating and moving on, there is a lot of young talent on the team (as well as a couple great Juniors coming back next year), and I look forward to seeing where they go from here.