Mounties look to get back into win column.
Lansdowne Street is one of the ultimate destinations for sports fans looking to take in a baseball game, as it runs behind the ‘Green Monster’ of Fenway Park in Boston. Lansdowne Field, the home of the Mount Allison Lacrosse team, isn’t quite the same attraction.
The team plays on not the primary field of the Mount Allison Athletics department, MacAulay Field, nor the secondary field, Park Street Field, but the tertiary field of the Athletics department, Lansdowne Field.
Lansdowne Field resembles a field after a rock concert rather than the field for club-level athletics that it currently serves as. Mt. A uses the field as not only the home of the lacrosse team, but the home for outdoor intramural athletics, such as soccer. Since lacrosse is only a club sport for the Athletics department, it is not a top priority.
In an interview with The Argosy, former lacrosse star Kevin Isherwood was terse in his description of Lansdowne.
“[The field] is not a field you can play lacrosse on,” he said.
Positive feedback is hard to find in the Athletics Department. One can only imagine the shock of an opposing team as they are ushered on to Lansdowne Field for a Maritime University Field Lacrosse League (MUFLL) match.
Surprisingly, there are members of the lacrosse team who do enjoy playing in the primitive conditions.
Mounties lacrosse athlete Ali Rehman said, “it’s a field that brings lacrosse back to its roots. It can offer us a good home field advantage but can also be a challenge for both sides at times.”
Every year, the conversation comes up around Mt. A concerning the condition of the outdoor fields. As soon as conditions start to become treacherous on the three grass fields, the amount of grumblings from student athletes increases from the odd Mountie, to a full-blown pandemic.
It’s not just the athletes either. Last year, members of The Argosy‘s sports section teamed up to debate whether it was time to upgrade to turf or not. Currently, no plans of upgrading the field have been prepared. It’s a commonly-held opinion among Argosy sports journalists that all of our programs could benefit from an upgrade to the field.
The Mounties lacrosse team, forced to play on Lansdowne Field, seems to be the one team feeling the full affect of the playing conditions. The Mounties lost all eight of their games in 2012. They will hope to get back into the win column in 2013, as the team has not had a victory since a win over the Acadia Axeman in October of 2011.
Would an upgrade in playing conditions translate to a more competitive team? Maybe not, but I think that members of the team would agree it would be nicer to play somewhere other than Lansdowne.
