Why can?t Baltimore keep a professional lacrosse team? The most recent refugee from the city is the Bayhawks of the Major League Lacrosse. On Tuesday, The Examiner reported that the team will make its departure for Washington, D.C., before the upcoming season, a move to be made official in a press conference on Nov. 14.
For a city long heralded as the hotbed of lacrosse, Baltimore has lost two professional lacrosse teams in both the MLL (outdoor) and the National Lacrosse League (indoor). Mitch Whiteley, a former coach in the MLL, said that the move is another blow to the lacrosse community of Baltimore.
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“It is sad,” Whiteley said. “Here, Baltimore is supposed to be the cradle of lacrosse, but with the two professional leagues, we don?t have a one team.”
Whiteley, formerly the coach for the Boston Cannons in the MLL?s inaugural season and a 26-year high-school coaching veteran at St. Paul?s School (both boys and girls teams), knows one of the problems that professional lacrosse teams face.
“People are saturated with lacrosse,” he said. “Between college games and the high-school rivalries, people get their fill of lacrosse.”
Declining attendance was a key motivation for the Bayhawks? decision to move, but according to former team owner Gordon Boone, getting people out to the games has always been a struggle.
“We gave it six years, and we were not seeing the response we were looking for,” Boone said, referring to why his group sold the team. “We spenta lot of money to make this happen and we did well for a few years, but it was not enough.”
Boone, whose only involvement in the MLL now is as a draft advisor for the Long Island Lizards, said he and his former ownership partners offered to help the new group of owners, led by Jeffrey Harvey and Bayhawks coach Scott Hiller, with marketing. In the first season under the new ownership, the team?s attendance slipped from an average of 4,802 per game to 2,973 per game.
“They did not want anything to do with any of us, as far as local connections,” Boone said. “I wish they had reached out to us during the transition. They might still be here.”
As a former owner, Boone had knowledge on where the league was looking to expand. He said he does not see the team sticking around D.C. for more than one season.
“I see them ending up in San Diego or Dallas in 2008,” Boone said. “That is where there was some interest.”
