The weather on Saturday was unseasonably warm and made for a perfect way to kick off the 2012 college lacrosse season. Being fair weather fans, Woody and I decided to make the 4 mile trek from 24 Seven Lax headquarters to the Campus of UMBC to check out our first event of the year. The occasion was a scrimmage between the Division II Limestone Saints and the Division I Retrievers of UMBC. It was the first action of the ’12 campaign for both teams and an intriguing match up for us lax bloggers.

LAS came alive with the club ball post a couple of weeks ago and the comments invariably led to which DIII and DII teams could compete with DI teams, which club teams could compete with NCAA programs, which super heroes could compete with Darth Vader, etc. You get the picture. The commenters flexed their mouse fingers and offered up their best theories about who could beat who and why we should care. In Catonsville, MD on Saturday, we got a chance to see world’s collide when the DII heavyweights from Gaffney, SC came to town to play an up and coming DI ball club in the heart of lax country, USA.

Although only a scrimmage, this is the kind of match up that could shed some light on the differences between the game from one division to the next. Limestone is expected to do very well DII this year, while expectations are not that high for the young UMBC squad. This is the match up that the commenters, trolls, and lax junkies were debating. Could a solid DII or DIII team compete with a non-elite DI team? I was anxious to find out.

As one might expect, both teams came out ready to rumble in their first action against a real opponent. UMBC held out a couple of starters on offense but came out battling just the same. To Limestone’s credit, there seemed to be no jitters or hesitation on their part despite “playing up”. They came to play and for the first part of the game, went toe to toe with UMBC. I was surprised at how sharp both teams looked in transition and unsettled situations. Settled offense seemed to be a bit more of a challenge for both teams, but they managed to put up some points despite that.

While the players weren’t in mid-season form, the bitching fans certainly were. Oh, and did I mention the tailgaters. They were in mid-season form as well. Woody pointed out that you can take the boys out of Glen Burnie and send them to Gaffney, but you can’t take the Glen Burnie out of the boys. There was a decent sized crowd for an early January scrimmage but I wasn’t surprised given the make up of the teams. Both squads boast in the neighborhood of 20 Maryland kids, so it was a convenient game for friends and family.

The score was not officially kept and I couldn’t keep up, but depending on which fans you asked, the score was somewhere between 10-8 Limestone to 12-6 UMBC before both squads started subbing liberally. Those hard facts should settle the debate about DII vs. DI, etc. Am I right? I was pretty sure that UMBC stretched the lead by a decent margin, but that wasn’t the point of the scrimmage.

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