A professional lacrosse team will call Maryland home for the first time since 2020, the Premier Lacrosse League announced on Nov. 14.
The PLL’s Whipsnakes will be housed in Maryland as the league shifts to a new model, one in which each team will host the league’s seven other squads for at least one weekend during the season.
There are no true home and away games at this point, but by branding the team as the Maryland Whipsnakes, the PLL is committing to the state of Maryland as a location for when the league makes the eventual shift to traditional home and away games.
PLL co-founder and Johns Hopkins lacrosse legend Paul Rabil said the league chose Maryland as the location for a PLL team because of the crowd sizes at previous events in the state.
“Baltimore and Maryland at large have held some of our biggest crowds, our most sellouts, high viewership, and also hosted major tentpole events for the league,” Rabil said on Glenn Clark Radio Nov. 20. “We played our championship game at Audi Field in D.C. We have annual sellouts at Homewood Field. We brought in our inaugural PLL junior championships last summer to Homewood. We’ve had our Hall of Fame induction there. So it’s a really important market for us.”
Rabil had a stellar career at Johns Hopkins, totaling 75 goals and 53 assists in 62 games across four years. Homewood Field has hosted PLL games in each of the four full seasons the league has played thus far. However, Rabil, a Gaithersburg, Md., native, did not commit to a specific location yet for the Whipsnakes. The schedule comes out on Jan. 1.
The decision to place PLL teams with home markets comes amid positive momentum for lacrosse after it was recently chosen to be a sport for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Lacrosse was last played in the Olympics in 1908. The positive trend has Rabil excited for the future of the sport.
Rabil is hopeful for a traditional home-and-away setup by the end of the decade.
“The date on the calendar that I look at is July 2028, and that’s when lacrosse will be playing in the Olympics in Los Angeles,” Rabil said. “If you back your way out of, ‘OK, what will that do for lacrosse, what is that already doing to lacrosse and how can we continue to help,’ but also leverage that newfound awareness and growth opportunity, we’re flooring the gas from now through 2028.”
Rabil thought about playing for the United States lacrosse team in the Olympics, but he decided that his relationship with the sport is already good enough in his current role. He will be 42 in 2028.
“Beyond the game comes service,” Rabil said. “What are you doing for the posterity of something that gave you so much? And while I would have loved to have played in the Olympics — I dreamed about it — I feel really lucky and grateful that I had a major role in getting lacrosse back into the Olympics. That was my version of playing this time around.”
Heightened attention geared toward lacrosse because of the Olympics will help Rabil with one of his main goals — turning the PLL into the next MLS.
“I want to build the next MLS and do it in half the amount of time,” Rabil said. “And that means we have to have plans if we want to get there. Up to this point, fortunately we’ve been operating and executing our five-year plan and have another intense three to five years of operating, and we also have a 10-year plan beyond the date today.”
The MLS currently has 29 teams, and while the PLL only has eight as of now, Rabil left the door open for the possibility of league expansion, both before and after the 2028 Olympics.
“There is growth that could happen before 2028. There’s growth that will likely happen after 2028,” Rabil said. “Markets that were on the outside looking in are powerful markets for us — but again, we only have eight teams — [are] the Midwest, Texas, Florida and the [Pacific] Northwest. Those are all markets that we have played in, have had success in and will continue to play in.”
For more from Rabil, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Premier Lacrosse League