In November, the Premier Lacrosse League announced that it was tying its eight teams to home markets. The Whipsnakes were sent to Maryland, one of the country’s hotbeds for lacrosse.
The match made sense. Thirteen University of Maryland products played for the Whipsnakes in 2023, and supporters flock to Homewood Field at Johns Hopkins University every year to see the team play.
The PLL has utilized a barnstorming model since its inaugural season in 2019, and that will continue for the foreseeable future despite tying every team to a home market. Each team, however, will “host” a weekend in 2024. The PLL is set to come to Homewood Field from Aug. 2-4. The Whipsnakes will play two games that weekend.
Whipsnakes head coach Jim Stagnitta joined Glenn Clark Radio Jan. 4 to discuss calling Maryland home, getting back to a championship level, growing the game and more.
This has been edited for content and clarity.
PressBox: Does anything about your job actually change now that the team you coach is called the Maryland Whipsnakes?
Jim Stagnitta: I think it changes more as far as our interaction with the community in making it kind of official. I’ve always felt like we were the Maryland Whipsnakes. It always felt like a home game there for us with the crowd and the support and certainly the number of Maryland guys we have on our roster. It just kind of confirms that, but it also brings us into the community between PLL Assists and all the youth efforts, kind of puts in a more interactive position with the people in the state and in Baltimore.
PB: I know you’d make an argument for Western New York, but so many throughout the country believe this is the home for lacrosse. Now that the Whipsnakes have been declared the Maryland team, is there an additional amount of pressure that comes along with that?
JS: I’m an Upstate New York guy. I grew up in Syracuse. I have really strong roots in Maryland from the years of recruiting as a college coach. My son played at Hopkins. My wife is from Baltimore, grew up as a Colts and Orioles season-ticket holder. So I have a real good idea and understanding of what the expectations are there for their teams, and our goal is always to compete at the highest level. While we took a little bit of a step back last year, I know that we’re inspired to get back and are doing the things that we need to do to get back. I think it’s great to be in an area where there are high expectations and people know lacrosse. That’s what I’ve always appreciated about it is the knowledge of the people there and the understanding of the game. I know our guys are excited about it. It just makes sense. It’s the right place and the right fit for us.
PB: How exciting is it to further entrench the team with the community as part of what the PLL is doing?
JS: I think at this point this is the next step for the PLL. Mike and Paul Rabil have really done this in a very planned way, right? And this is the next step. This is kind of putting teams to cities. Again, for us to be able to call a place a home, I think our guys are comfortable there. We’ve been successful there. When we show up in Baltimore to play games and when we’ve gone to Hopkins, there are a ton of Maryland lacrosse T-shirts and Whipsnakes T-shirts. It’s been a place where our guys have felt like they’ve had kind of a home-court advantage.
PB: How can the Whipsnakes get back to their championship level after winning the league in 2019 and 2020?
JS: There are a lot of different pieces to it, and certainly we have spent the last few months kind of evaluating. One of the hardest things to do in sports is to sustain that level of success. You start to become a little bit comfortable, a little bit complacent and you start to expect that that’s going to happen. We had some adversity last year. Our lineup was never completely healthy, but at the same time, in years past we were able to overcome that. The league has continued to evolve. I think teams have set their personnel and their approach in a way that they can counter what we do which is what all good teams do. Now we have an opportunity and a necessity to make some changes.
Again, we’ve had a foundation of the same five guys for now five years. Some of those guys have been with me since MLL days — 8 to 10 years. It’s a Catch-22. You win, and you end up with the last pick in the draft. We’ve been at the bottom of that for the last few years. We feel like we have an opportunity in a great draft to address some areas that we need to improve upon, and we’re trying to take advantage of that. There are some personnel moves that we haven’t made in the past because we haven’t had to that we’re starting to make. They’re not going to be major, but the league is getting younger. The players are getting better. Every team has improved dramatically. Now it’s our time to kind of make some of these tweaks that we need to make to get back that focus back and that desire.
The one thing about these Maryland guys — the University of Maryland guys — and our team as a whole is they’re proud. As much as anything else, they understand that we didn’t achieve and perform at the level consistently last year that we have in the past. They’re focused on doing the things that we need to do to put ourselves back in the mix.
PB: As the PLL gets to a point where there are more and more home games in the future, do you feel like there is not going to be a team that has a greater advantage than the Whipsnakes moving forward?
JS: I don’t know how they could, honestly. There’s no guarantee that we will always have that depth of Maryland player, but that’s something that we focus on because of their experience, their breed. They play in big games in front of big crowds. They play team lacrosse. They’re well-coached. They’re tough. And they come from a great culture. So those are things that are important to us, so that’s certainly a place that we will always look to first and foremost for players. But again, I think out of every venue we’ve been to, their knowledge and appreciation of the game is just at a different level than anywhere else we’ve been. Yeah, I think we have a home-field advantage that may be different early on than any other team in the league.
PB: Now that you are trying to cultivate support in the community, what is your message to convince casual lacrosse fans in this area that it’s time to jump on board and support the Maryland Whipsnakes?
JS: It’s an event. It’s an experience. The excitement, the electricity, obviously the speed of the game, it’s different than the college game in some of the rules. It’s fast. It has everything you could ever want in sports. Everybody’s competitive. What the Rabils have been able to do and what the league has been able to do is turn this into kind of a weekend event. It’s so much more than a game. The player interaction, our guys spend so much time with the kids. I can tell you, I was a college coach for 28 years in some pretty competitive places, and no one really cared or knew much about who I was. They’ve built brands for all of these players and all of us. I think we’re just scratching the surface, we really are. But I just don’t feel like Maryland’s one of those places — or Baltimore — where we have to convince people of the quality of what this is, compared to some other places.
PB: What does it mean to you to see the interactions between players and young fans?
JS: I’ve been around this for so long. It really is growing the game. When you go to these games, it’s a family event comparatively. There are kids all over the place. They get to interact with the players and the players are really good at it and they’re really generous with their time regardless, win or lose. Just to see what these guys have built from a brand standpoint and the jerseys with names on [them] and how these kids look at them and interact with them, for me to see what the PLL has done in that regard is a game-changer.
For more from Stagnitta, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Premier Lacrosse League