Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 7/13/09
La Salle, which won the first Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) boys’ championship, has a No. 1 seed in its Group in LaxPower’s National Online Lacrosse Tournament (NOLT) launched this week.
The first-ever virtual national high school championship features 64 teams which qualified based on the website’s Power Rankings. In this tourney, the top-ranked team in each state as well as the top team from the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council, and the next 24 highest-rated squads were selected to participate.
Besides La Salle (21-4), competing in Group 4, Philly teams selected to “play” in the tourney are:
*PIAA runner-up Conestoga (seeded No. 2 in Group 3);
*Inter-Ac League champion Haverford School (seeded 7th in Group 1);
*Delaware state champion Salesianum (seeded 10th in Group 1).
Here are the brackets. Results of the NOLT will be posted according to the following schedule:
Round 1: Tuesday, July 14
Round 2: Thursday, July 16
Round 3: Monday, July 20
Round 4: Wednesday, July 22
Round 5: Monday, July 27
Round 6: Wednesday, July 29
Teams were seeded by Power Rating on an S-curve to create tournament brackets, and winners will be determined based on votes from a panel of LaxPower experts and LaxPower’s computer Power Rankings.
The LaxPower experts, mostly from the Philly area, include:
*Brett Manney – The 2008 captain at NCAA Final Four qualifier Delaware and a graduate of Holy Ghost Prep. Manney, recently profiled on Phillylacrosse.com, plays professionally for the Washington (formerly San Jose) Stealth of National League Lacrosse.
*Ryan Rohde – All-American on three national championship teams at Salisbury University and a graduate of Malvern Prep.
*George Baldassare – Director of High School Boys’ Lacrosse for LaxPower since 1998; assistant high school coach who served on the staff of the USA U-19 teams in 2003 and 2008.
*Eric S. Smith – Covered southeastern Pennsylvania lacrosse for the Daily Local News of Chester County before joining LaxPower to cover the Midwest, Maryland, and the Northeast regions.
The first round will feature much excitement as Haverford School (16-8) will face Salesianum, which went undefeated (17-0) this year and features many Pennsylvania players and several of whom star on the Philly-based Duke’s Lacrosse Club.
Also in the first round, La Salle meets Louisiana state champion Loyola-Shreveport (9-1) and Conestoga (24-2) meets the Idaho state champ, Timberline (21-4).
The tourney also has sparked a LaxPower forum.
