Since this is the first year that lacrosse is an officially-sanctioned varsity sport at several YAIAA schools, it's hard to gauge which teams are the favorites to win the division titles and make some noise in the playoffs on both the boys and girls side.
Luckily, there's some entity out there confident enough in its system to post computer rankings for both boys and girls teams in Central Pennsylvania.
In a couple weeks or so, I'm thinking of doing my own spring rankings, with a bit of a twist. What I'm thinking is putting together a top ten teams across all the spring sports, ranking the squads based on how dominant they are against their competition. For example, at No. 1 could be a boys' volleyball team, at No. 2 could be a girls' soccer team, etc. Stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, check out my attempt at analysis of these lacrosse rankings after the jump.
According to LaxPower, the top-ranked girls team in the YAIAA is Kennard-Dale and the top-ranked boys team in the area is Red Lion. The Lions are the only YAIAA team to have both a boys and girls team ranked in the top 10, with the both teams at the No. 7 spot.
The other boys teams in the top 20 are No. 14 Dallastown and No. 15 Susquehannock. The other girls teams in the top 20 are No. 11 Spring Grove and No. 16 Dallastown.
I only saw one lacrosse game last year -- a boys contest between Susquehannock and Dallastown. It wasn't even close. The Warriors destroyed the Wildcats. I have a hard time believing that one year would make so much of a difference that Susquehannock would be ranked lower than Dallastown, or even Red Lion for that matter, considering the Warriors went undefeated last season.
For now, the Susquehannock boys get the benefit of the doubt from me, even if they don't get it from the LaxPower computer.
All four ranked girls teams are undefeated so far this year and Wednesday's battle between Spring Grove and Dallastown should be telling. But based on my limited knowledge, I have no gripes with the rankings on the girls side.
What do you think? Do these computer rankings seem to be on target?
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