Pro lacrosse league designed to promote women's sports
Digit Murphy and Aronda Kirby knew there was a chance to do something different. They were convinced their idea - create a new blueprint for successful women's sports leagues - could work. They just needed to find the right sport.
Digit Murphy and Aronda Kirby knew there was a chance to do something different. They were convinced their idea - create a new blueprint for successful women's sports leagues - could work. They just needed to find the right sport.
Murphy and Kirby had spent the last three years as the head coach and general manager, respectively, of the Boston Blades in the Canadian Women's Hockey League. To create a small amount of revenue, the Blades had to sell candy bars and raffle tickets at games.
Murphy, previously the head women's ice hockey coach at Brown for 22 years, had enjoyed the NCAA's vast resources. With the Blades, she had few resources and worked tirelessly for little payoff.
When the U.S.-based National Women's Hockey League launched in 2015, the two hockey leagues were suddenly competing against each other. Murphy and Kirby thought the dust needed to settle in the hockey world. So they looked to lacrosse instead of hockey to bring their plan to life.
"It's just rolling your sleeves up, and you're doing it from the grassroots level," Kirby said.
The plan was to create a sustainable professional league for women modeled on the concept of players serving as brand ambassadors in the community. This summer, the Boston-based United Women's Lacrosse League (UWLX) launched its inaugural season and has partnered with Play It Forward Sport, a Boston nonprofit organization also founded by Murphy and Kirby.
The nonprofit instantly provided an outlet for the league's community outreach programs and a blueprint for pro women's sports leagues to attract sponsors with this new approach.
The four-team league's regular season has already wrapped up, and its championship weekend is set for July 30-31 in Baltimore. Though there are no home venues yet, the team named the Philadelphia Force finished in fourth place with a 2-6 record.
"Start-up leagues have a pretty high failure rate," said Joel Maxcy, the head of Drexel's sport management department. "It's a tough business to crack into. That being said, this [community partnership] is an interesting thing."
The league has already partnered with Eyekonz, a program to introduce lacrosse to African American girls in Strawberry Mansion, which was created by Jazmine Smith. The plan to have players serve as mentors in the community is already in place. Over time, the partnership is expected to organize more clinics, nutrition talks, and mentoring camps.
The UWLX has sponsorship deals with the STX sports equipment company, Acme, and New England Sports Village, a youth sports complex in Attleboro, Mass. By the start of next season, Murphy is hopeful more companies will recognize the unique mission of the league and contribute.
"We think of it as creating opportunities for women in sports," Kirby said.
After games, players typically hang around to sign autographs and take photos with fans. Their ability to inspire the next generation of players has major implications on the league's longevity, the organizers say.
Challenging work
Creating a professional league for women has its challenges. Even the most successful women's professional leagues - the WNBA and the National Women's Soccer League - have struggled to find a fraction of the success men's leagues have.
Murphy said, "People aren't conditioned to watch women's sports yet," and games aren't on TV. So that's why the UWLX is bringing the games to its target audience by playing them at large youth tournaments on the recruiting trail.
"Could you imagine if it was somewhere else?" Force attack Michelle Tumolo said. "No one would be able to come because they'd be at the tournaments. It's the smartest plan they could have come up with."
The Boston Storm, Long Island Sound, Baltimore Ride, and the Force have played games throughout the Northeast, where lacrosse is most popular. It has allowed the nearly 30 players who are also college coaches to double dip on recruiting players and playing games on the same weekend.
Tumolo, who is from Mullica Hill, is an assistant coach at Oregon. She hopes that high schoolers who watch her play decide they want her to be their coach.
The colors of each UWLX team align with NFL teams in those cities to build brand recognition among sports fans. The plan, Kirby said, is to eventually bring games closer to home cities and create a more local following for each team.
In this first season, players have been compensated only with the cost of travel, not salaries. But many players say they want to be part of history and hope their sacrifices will pay off for those waiting for autographs after games.
"This is paving the way for them," Ride coach Jen Adams said. "So parents and kids coming out to support is how we're going to grow and how it's going to sustain itself in the future."
The league also made several changes from the NCAA's rules to make its game more exciting. Given their background in women's hockey, Kirby and Murphy thought lacrosse needed a faster pace. But they weren't qualified, they said, to know which rules to change.
So league commissioner Michele DeJuliis, a four-time lacrosse all-American at Penn State and a captain of the U.S. national team for the 2009 World Cup, made adjustments such as players' not having to stop moving when a foul is called, a 90-second shot clock, and a two-point shot.
It's all to create more interest among fans and make them want to wait after games for a moment with their favorite players.
"The next step is to get this thing capitalized, make it pop so we can get the players paid," Murphy said, "and we can keep going on this really cool march to creating more opportunities for players."
For more information on the United Women's Lacrosse League, go to www.uwlx.pointstreaksites.com.