Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 2/3/23 – From Press Release
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., USA – World Lacrosse has announced the 87-game schedule for the 2023 World Lacrosse Men’s Championship set to take place in San Diego, Calif., from June 21 to July 1.
The championship will feature 30 national teams split into six groups for pool play, followed by playoffs that will include quarterfinals, semifinals and medal games. Competition will be staged across three venues at San Diego State University and the University of San Diego, with marquee matchups taking place at SDSU’s new, state-of-the-art Snapdragon Stadium.
The event will commence June 21 with the reigning champion United States taking on No. 2 Canada, followed by the Opening Ceremony at Snapdragon Stadium, which will later play host to the semifinals on June 29 and medal games on July 1. The 35,000-seat venue that opened in September 2022 is home to SDSU football, the National Women’s Soccer League’s San Diego Wave and Major League Rugby’s San Diego Legion.
Eleven matches — including all A-pool games and two quarterfinals – will take place at USD’s Torero Stadium, which seats 6,000 and is home to the school’s football and soccer programs.
All remaining games will take place on SDSU’s campus among four adjacent fields, anchored by SDSU Sports Deck, the 1,500-seat home of the university’s soccer programs.
The 30-team field is made up of the top 10 finishers from the 2018 Men’s Championship – which all earned automatic qualification – along with 20 teams determined by continental qualifiers that took place last year. The European Lacrosse Federation received 11 slots, the Asia Pacific Lacrosse Union and Pan-American Lacrosse Association each received four slots, and the Africa Association of Lacrosse received one slot, based on the number of WL members in each Continental Federation.
The top five seeded teams make up the A pool: the United States, Canada, the Haudenosaunee, England and Australia. The remaining teams were split into pools B-F based on their finishes at continental qualifiers, ensuring that each pool has representation from a minimum of three continents.
The six pools will compete in a round-robin format from June 21-26. The top two A pool teams will advance directly to the quarterfinals, while the remaining three teams from the A pool will join the top nine teams from pools B-F (five first-place finishers and four second-place finishers) in the first round of the playoffs on June 27 to determine the remaining teams in the quarterfinals, which kick off on June 28.
The full schedule can be found here.
