Lacrosse team looks for support despite top record

If someone were to ask a Missoula resident what University of Montana sports team most recently won a national championship, most would answer the Grizzly football team. And while the answer does play in Washington-Grizzly Stadium and Montana has captured the national title twice since 1995, it is not the Grizzlies of the gridiron who have the most recent trophy of national prominence.

It is the University of Montana men’s lacrosse team.

Montana captured the 2007 Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association Division B national title to limited fanfare. Lacrosse is not a varsity sport sponsored by the Montana athletic department, but a club sport with the majority of funding coming from within the team. It may not be on the level of Grizzly football, but new head coach Ryan Hanavan and his top assistant, Kevin Flynn, have spent the better part of the last decade trying to change that.

Hanavan, who served as the head coach for the University of Idaho club team for the past two seasons, has seen lacrosse grow exponentially at the University of Montana since his days as an undergraduate in the late 1990s.

“I was actually the guy who went to petition for entrance into the (Pacific Northwest Collegiate Lacrosse) league back when the program first started,” said Hanavan, who graduated from Montana in 2001 after serving as a player-coach for the Montana club team during his initial stay in Montana.

After graduation, Hanavan, a native of Orchard Park, N.Y., returned to New York to attend Syracuse. He left behind a program that was but a blip on the national radar. Montana lacrosse didn’t start to ascend to its present heights until current assistant and former player-coach Flynn took hold of the reins. 

“We needed to get everyone on the team on the same page as to what our purpose was, was the main thing,” said Flynn, who played and coached Montana’s run to the national title in 2007 before giving way to his good friend, Hanavan. “When I first got here, it was more like an intramural team than a club sport. But in the summers of 2004 and 2005 we really made an effort to become a competitive program.”

When Flynn first arrived at Montana, the team consisted of about 15 players and won only one game. Now UM conducts tryouts to help keep the numbers down and will field two full squads for the second annual Montana Lacrosse Shootout this weekend.

Flynn said he and Hanavan recruit players, but not in the traditional sense. Since the lacrosse team has no direct affiliation with UM or its athletic department, no financial benefits can be offered to potential recruits. Montana has used the school’s location, the campus’ beauty and online recruiting surveys as ways of luring players to Missoula. A good amount of Montana’s players also transfer from varsity programs that like what the Garden City has to offer.

“Kids that are scholarship players and not scholarship players alike sometimes decide they don’t like their current situation but are still looking to play lacrosse,” Hanavan said. “Missoula is a pretty easy sell, the University of Montana is a pretty easy sell. So when you let them know that we also have a pretty decent lacrosse team, it really helps out.”

Flynn has also tried to increase lacrosse’s exposure and popularity locally and state-wide, as Montana does not offer lacrosse even as a high school sport. He has even hit the recruiting trail.

“The makeup of our team has really shifted demographically,” Flynn said. “We used to be made up of almost all East Coast guys but now our roster consists of kids from coast to coast. I spend almost all summer every summer just going to high school tournaments just trying to get our name out there.”

Flynn’s efforts finally came to fruition two springs ago as Montana rolled over Saint Johns 15-5 to capture the MCLA-B championship with Hanavan assisting Flynn as a coach. Four Grizzlies were named All-Americans.

But Montana never got a chance to be the big dog on the block, as they moved up from division two (formerly div. B) to division one of the PNCLL to pursue better competition. 

“The level of play in division one versus division two is similar to the divisions in football,” Hanavan said. “It’s the difference between USC and Montana football. The competition is still good, but Montana just had the resources and the players to make the move.”

In their first year in division one last year, Montana finished 10-4 overall and reached the Final Four of the PNCLL, hosted in Missoula at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

Hanavan earned his degree in entomology from the University of Idaho in 2008 and took a job with the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula studying bark beetles and fire. After exhausting his eligibility as a player, Flynn readily relinquished head coaching duties to Hanavan and stayed on as an assistant. With recent success, Hanavan said he is optimistic about the future.

“It’s great to be back in Missoula with such a talented program,” said Hanavan on the Grizzly lacrosse Web site following his hiring. “I feel like we have the pieces in place to compete on a national level and I’m looking forward to that opportunity.”

The Montana Lacrosse Shootout will feature eight men’s teams, including Hanavan’s former University of Idaho along with PNCLL rivals Montana State and Gonzaga. There will also be women’s and high school exhibition games along with clinics and officiating certification. The competition kicks off on Saturday morning at Dornblaser Field.

colter.nuanez@umontana.edu