Wednesday, April 27, 2005

MLL announces first of four west coast expansion teams for 2006

OurSports Central (article)


The new Los Angeles MLL team will play its games at The Home Depot Center in Carson, CA. [...]
Major League Lacrosse will announce the team name, general manager and head coach for its new Los Angeles team at a later date. The majority of the team’s players will come from the MLL’s expansion draft, scheduled to take place in the fall of 2005.
“This is a major moment in the history of the MLL,” said Gross. “Not only is this our first of four west coast expansion teams for 2006, we have been able to add an incredible partner with AEG. This is truly an historic event for our league. We expect to name the second western expansion organization shortly and have the other two in the fold in the coming months.”
The MLL plans to add four total expansion teams for the 2006 season, to comprise its western division. The league will subsequently add two more teams by 2008, completing the division and its western expansion initiative.


This is good news for a couple of reasons:
First, the MLL is the premiere outdoor lacrosse league, but they only had teams on the east coast, which made my interest low, just because I really had no team to root for.
Second, this gives cities more reasons to build smaller outdoor stadiums like the Columbus Crew Stadium and the Home Depot Center, which are made for smaller sports. These small stadiums help the atmosphere of the game because they can be filled easily.
Thirdly, lacrosse is a good sport, and it is good to see that both the MLL and the NLL are being supported well.

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