 |
Bill Dirrigl is in his second season as head coach at Loyola, but he is quite familiar with the program.
Dirrigl spent 10 seasons as an assistant coach there under Dave Cottle.
The Greyhounds finished 9-4 last year and are ranked No. 12 in Inside Lacrosse’s preseason poll.
BaltimoreSun.com: Which players will be crucial to your success?
Bill Dirrigl: Defensively, we have six new pieces to the puzzle. We have senior Mark Bloomquist (North County), who returns for us in goal, who is going to be a great leader for us.
We have four or five guys that are going to be starting for first time defensively. We only graduated one offensive player last year and that was Michael Sullivan. We’ve got Gunnar Goettleman back after sitting out a year, Steve Brundage is back and Chris Summers (St. Mary’s) is back. We do have three quality players with game experience at attack.
BaltimoreSun.com: Did the expansion of the NCAA field to 16 teams for this season affect any of your scheduling?
Bill Dirrigl: I don’t know if I made a difficult schedule for Loyola because of the NCAA tournament. I’ve always felt that the best way to gauge your team is to play best teams in the country. This year we added Princeton and I think our schedule is rated third in the country. It’s going to be difficult, but I think our team wants to play the best of the best.
John, Ellicott City: My question has to do with the development of young players. At what age should a player focus exclusively on his/her development as a goalie as opposed to spending half of practice and game time working on field position skills?
Bill Dirrigl: Each kid is different and you have to judge each kid. I’ve seen a lot of kids come through here that were outstanding goalies that didn’t play other sports and I’ve seen a lot of kids that played other sports and were a goalie. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. I played football, basketball and lacrosse and to be honest, a lot of our recruits for next year, I think a11 of them played three sports year-round.
BaltimoreSun.com: What are your feelings about incorporating the shot clock into the college game?
Bill Dirrigl: I think the shot clock in some ways could be very beneficial to the game. But the question comes in with funding, the financing, the referees and how you would go about doing it. Our game has taken a jump forward in past 7-8 years, and with the tournament going to Ravens Stadium, we’re looking at a final with maybe 40,000 people. What we need to do now, is that any rule change we make is professional.
What scares me most is that in the different venues – Division I, II and III, it’s going to be difficult. I’m not so sure in every lacrosse venue in the country, the clock is going to be accessible [visible to fans and players on the field] and people are going to be willing to put that money into it. Each place would be so drastically different.
