Lacrosse’s September 1 recruiting date will remain.

Men’s and women’s lacrosse were removed from a proposal that the NCAA Division I Council passed during their meeting Thursday and Friday in Indianapolis. For most sports, the new rule will permit contact from or to a coach June 15 of a high school student’s sophomore year and will allow prospective student-athlete visits to start Aug. 1.

While for some sports the contact and visit rules set new dates that are later than they have been making contact, the June and August dates would have pushed forward the recruiting timeline for lacrosse. The ACC submitted Proposal 2018-93-2 to the council to exempt lacrosse and keep Sept. 1 as the initial date of any contact. The Sept. 1 date was only adopted two years ago for lacrosse by the DI Council.

“I’m pleased that the members of the council were able to listen to us,” said Duke women’s head coach Kerstin Kimel, the chair of the IWLCA committee. “I’m happy the ACC was able to submit their proposal. What it does is it saves the summer for the kids.”

“It’s a huge win for our sport,” said Penn men’s head coach Mike Murphy, vice president of the IMLCA.  “It’s very gratifying to hear that the NCAA put the kids first, instead trying to align administrators on a timeline. They took into consideration what was the best thing for the prospective student-athletes. I think that’s a big step forward and something important for our sport. We put a lot of work into getting our Sept. 1 recruiting timeline put into place.”

The new rule will go into effect May 1. Lacrosse and softball were exempt, and sports such as football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey also have their own recruiting calendar and are not affected by the new rule.

Lacrosse fought together to keep their Sept. 1 date over the last six months. The Division I Student-Athlete Experience Committee’s proposal that included lacrosse had been supported furthermore by a memo to the DI Council sent March 25 from the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, but the IWLCA sent a strong response to the SAAC and SAEC and all DI Council members outlining their objections. Several on the council were members of it when the Sept. 1 recruiting date had passed two years ago.

“I think we felt good going into it that we had good support,” Kimel said. “The feedback we got was the days of one size fits all are gone.”

When the IWLCA surveyed its coaches in their November meeting, all but seven coaches were in favor of keeping the Sept. 1 date. When the IMLCA met in December, 100 percent of respondents were in favor of keeping the Sept. 1 date.

Lacrosse objected to the effect of splitting the contact and visitation dates, and worried about the effects of moving up the recruiting dates again to a time that was at the end of the high school lacrosse season and academic year. College coaches like the Sept. 1 date because it allows prospective student-athletes to just play during the summer without worrying about who is contacting them, and they like starting contact and visitations in the fall when college classes and practices are back in session.

Lacrosse coaches feel as though they still haven’t seen the full effects of moving the date to Sept. 1. The high school class of 2021 would be the first without extensive contact with college coaches before Sept. 1.

“Our organization is sophisticated enough to realize we don’t have all the answers and we might have to adjust,” Kimel said. “But it’s too early to know. We owe the process a couple more years to see if we have it right. Even if we end up adjusting it down the road, we’ll always keep what’s best for the kids and the process at the forefront of our priorities when we consider any adjustments to current legislation.”

“We’ll really start to see how this will affect things and the positive impact that it makes with the 2021 class that we’ll start recruiting in September,” Murphy said. “It’ll be very different. Everybody’s going into this essentially from the same starting point. I was really kind of relieved and excited and grateful that last September wasn’t a feeding frenzy. People really did take their time on both sides. Hopefully the same thing holds true.”