semifinals today. They have won 10 national championships and are an annual powerhouse.

(If you miss the joke, Cartwright used to teach at Salisbury University).

I grew up in suburban Baltimore in the 80's. High School lacrosse was mainly confined to the Northeast back then, and the dominant college teams were always Syracuse and Johns Hopkins. Loyola and Towson are newcomers to the party relative to Hopkins, but have been very competitive for 10 + years.

And lacrosse was more than a sport - it was the social network and the power network. In the early 1990's, "Baltimore Magazine" showed a picture of a lacrosse team from Gilman High School from the early 1970's. Most of the players in the picture were highlighted as some of the most prominent businessmen in Baltimore - CEO's of the few public companies they had at the time, bankers, lawyers, etc. I found it an interesting picture as I did not attend Gilman nor did I play lacrosse, and wondered what it took to make it big in Baltimore.

That more MD teams have not advanced in the NCAA's is a recent trend. It would have been unheard of to see a school like Denver or ND in the NCAA's 15-20 years ago. Lacrosse of any significance was basically restricted to Long Island and the Mid-Atlantic.

I too grew up in Baltimore and never played an inning of little league baseball since it competed with lacrosse season in the spring. Lacrosse rivals football for the biggest HS sport overall in the area. Just look at any college roster and you'll see pretty good representation from Baltimore/DC high schools.

With more colleges in play, more local talent is leaving the state for other programs like ND...also there is a ton more talent being produced from other regions of the country as it gets more popular.

I read an article within the last couple years that said something to the effect that half or more of the high school girls lacrosse players in Anne Arundel County went on to play in college.