While there are a few ways to define the modern era of college lacrosse, there may be no better line of demarcation than the beginning of the sport’s NCAA sponsorship.
The organizing efforts of then-Union College coach and eventual USA Lacrosse Hall of Famer Bruce Allison helped make it a reality when the NCAA voted in January 1970 to add a postseason tournament beginning the following year.
“It was great that they did, because we now moved the decision from a conference room to the playing field,” former Cornell coach Richie Moran said.
Moran knows all too well how settling a championship with a vote could go. The Big Red went 11-0 in 1970 but were voted fifth in the final rankings. Johns Hopkins, Navy and Virginia would share that title.
It was just the opinion of a handful of people, and Cornell had not faced any of the eventual tri-champions, so there was no way to know for sure how the Big Red would have fared. But it only further illustrated the value of the coming playoff.
“There was always a feeling up north, right or wrong, that there was a bias toward the southern schools, that they were inherently better,” said Bob Rule, a letterwinner at Cornell from 1969-71 and the Kelly Award winner as the nation’s top goalie in 1971.
Cornell opened 1971 with a 10-9 loss at Virginia, a good barometer it stacked up well with a team perceived to be among the nation’s best. Then it went about things like in a normal year, winning 10 games in a row to close the regular season.
That included another sweep of the Ivy League, which was long the most tangible accomplishment available to Cornell. But as April turned to May, it dawned on players more could be accomplished that year.
“There was nothing to look back on,” Rule said. “Going into it, it was like the great unknown. I don’t think anybody focused on it until toward the end of the regular season. People started saying, ‘Hey, we’re not stopping at the end of the season. We have playoffs.’ I think guys started to gear up for that toward the end of the season.”
Cornell pushed aside Ivy foe Brown 10-8 in the first round and then traveled to Army for what turned out to be the first great NCAA tournament game. It seemed possible the up-tempo Black Knights would simply wear down the Big Red over the course of the game.
Instead, Frank Davis scored four goals and midfielder Bob Shaw scored three times and played a key role down the stretch as Cornell claimed a 17-16 victory.
“Supposedly, [then-President Richard] Nixon was at West Point that day reviewing the corps of cadets,” Moran said. “I’m sure they were pretty inspired, but so were we.”
In some ways, the title game was anticlimactic. Moran maintained a rigorous training program throughout the postseason and had Cornell fully prepared for Maryland, which came out of the southern half of the bracket.
There was a hint of what was to come when Cornell arrived for its practice session at Hofstra the day before the championship game.
“On the bench, they had left a scouting report — I’m sure it was accidental,” Moran recalled. “But it was very limited on what Cornell had and what they could do. In fact, one of our players, who was strictly left-handed, they had that as a right-handed shooter. We realized it was something they put together quickly. … I’m not sure exactly what their preparation was like, but I know we put a lot of mileage into our preparation.”
Sure enough, Cornell jumped to an early lead en route to a 12-6 victory. Alan Rimmer scored the last six goals, and Bob Buhmann — who played in place of an injured Rule and wound up as an honorable mention All-America pick — made 22 saves.
And with that, the first NCAA lacrosse title was in the books.
“You have such a bond with those guys, because we all know it was a very special, unique thing that could happen,” Rule said. “Winning a championship, right, but winning the very first one? Not that it wouldn’t have been great if we won in 1980, but winning the first one is like winning the first World Series or the first NFL championship. It kind of means something. It sets off a whole new era in a sport, and that’s what I think we did.”
The first-of-its-kind title game drew 5,458 fans, a massive crowd for its time. Today, the tournament semifinals routinely draw more than 30,000 fans and the championship usually attracts at least 25,000. The tournament field has doubled in size from eight to 16 teams and is televised in its entirety. The last 17 championship weekends were played in NFL stadiums.
And the ’71 Big Red have a secure place in history. Cornell helped set the trajectory for where college lacrosse is a half-century after NCAA sponsorship began.
“Life is made of memories, and for all these young men to be able to carry this for 50 years [is special],” Moran said. “We had blazers made up; we had shirts made up over the years. We’ve been honored at halftime of NCAA games. It was something for other schools to reach for. We might have gone down the yellow brick road. The beautiful thing about it is, we opened the door to every other school that was playing lacrosse. I think it’s tremendous, because I personally believe it helped the growth of lacrosse.”