There's a bit of a sea change happening at Xavier University right now.
From the opening of the Heidt Family Champions Center to the announcement of the Klekamp Family Training Center and the technological upgrades inside Cintas Center, Xavier's campus is evolving.
Another one of those changes, the university announced Sunday, is the addition of a new sport: women's lacrosse.
At a time when many colleges and universities have been cutting sports because of the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Xavier's gone the other route with the addition of its 19th Division I varsity sport, the first new varsity sport at the university since men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field were added 16 years ago.
Xavier's first lacrosse team will first play during 2022-2023 school year
The new program, Xavier's 10th women's sport, will play its inaugural season in the 2022-23 academic year as an independent program, then will compete as a Big East Conference member beginning in 2024.
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"Lacrosse is the fastest growing team sport in the United States both at the high school level and the collegiate level," said Greg Christopher, Xavier's Vice President and Director of Athletics. "As we looked, and we looked at all opportunities that are out there on the women's side for NCAA sports, we narrowed in on women's lacrosse pretty quickly."
And it's a sport that made sense geographically in Ohio, the Midwest, and along the Eastern seaboard, all primary locations that populate Xavier's student body.
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New team part of school's strategic plan
When Christopher arrived at Xavier in the summer of 2013, he said the first thing Father Michael Graham, whose tenure as Xavier's President will come to an end on June 30, wanted was a strategic long-term plan. A couple of years ago, they refreshed that plan, and one of the primary pillars of that plan within the athletic department was a look at where the Musketeers stood from a Title IX standpoint.
Xavier's current undergraduate enrollment is 5,300, 57% of which is female. The addition of lacrosse will add approximately 35 undergraduate student-athletes to Xavier's roster of 300 student-athletes.
"As we examined that," Christopher said, "campus has changed over the last several years and Title IX has three basic prongs, the most commonly used prong is called proportionality and the short version of that is the percentage of athletes – male and female – should match the gender percentages of your student body."
Christopher explained that with the addition and growth of Xavier's College of Nursing, "our percentage of females has increased incrementally so that led us to the conversation of should we add a women's sport or should we look at reducing a men's sport."
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Xavier: Lacrosse program will be self-sustaining
Christopher said women's lacrosse will be a self-sustaining program for Xavier.
"The manner in which we fund our Olympic sports, at least some of our Olympic sports, is our sports break even or they're net revenue positive to the university," said Christopher. "Yes, we have an operating budget for each sport but when you add back in the NCAA funds we receive for each sport, coupled with tuition, housing, board revenue from the partial scholarship and the walk-on student-athletes, that's where we find that a vast majority of our sports are net revenue positive to the university."
There will be a bit of a start-up cost because Xavier will have to hire a head coach a year before it has the team, but long term, like Xavier's other sports, lacrosse will break even or be net revenue positive for the university, said Christopher.
No new facility needed for Xavier lacrosse team
While it will require some coordination, women's lacrosse, which plays its championship season in the spring, will not require new facilities. The existing Corcoran Field, home to men's and women's soccer, will be used for practices and matches, and the team will be housed in the new Heidt Center.
Xavier will join Butler, Connecticut, Georgetown, Marquette, Villanova and affiliate member Denver as women’s lacrosse-playing members of the Big East. There are currently 524 NCAA women’s lacrosse programs, including 117 in NCAA Division I. The Ohio High School Athletic Association sponsored women’s lacrosse beginning in 2017 and now there are more than 130 programs statewide.
Xavier will have the possibility of playing a number of local teams that also field women's lacrosse teams like Louisville, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Akron, Kent State, and most notably, Cincinnati.
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