Matt Kinnear

Wednesday August 9th, 2017

The NCAA Rules Committee is meeting in Indianapolis this week. "The Dive" has historically been a hot topic, and discussion on it ramped up at the end of the NCAA Semifinal between Denver and Maryland. The feature below is in the forthcoming September issue of Inside Lacrosse Magazine.

Alex Krawec heard a snap and a pop, and then he fell to the ground.

The last thing he remembers was looking down and seeing his right leg bent all the way to the left. He picked it up and dropped it back down; it was completely limp.

A player had come up from X and rolled inside. He leapt into the crease, and the defenseman — attempting to guard against “The Dive” — gave him a push, sending him out of control and further into the crease. He landed on Krawec, his full body weight focused on the goalie’s leg.

Krawec was rushed from Denver Outlaws training camp to the hospital for emergency surgery. He suffered a broken tibia, fibula and a fractured ankle.

His MLL career was likely over before it ever really started.

Weeks later, after a pair of controversial crease/push calls highlighted the end of Maryland’s 9-8 NCAA Semifinal win over Denver. Pioneer coach Bill Tierney said postgame: “We need to let the dive be back in the game.”

His proclamation was met with media attention as well as adulation from most lacrosse fans, who have been outspoken in their quest to “bring back the dive” since it was outlawed from the college game in the summer of 1998. It has been legal at the MLL level since the league’s inception, and it is a fixture in the indoor game.

Krawec, however, seethed upon hearing Tierney’s charge. He’s dealing with the physical pain from his injury as well as the emotional toll of knowing his MLL career is likely done, and that his career working in the sport has taken a serious hit.

“The crease is there for a reason,” he says. “The crease is a sacred place for the goalie.”

Krawec was a two-time Goalie of the Year and national champion at DII Le Moyne. He graduated in 2016 and was selected by the Outlaws in the 2017 Supplemental Draft. Doctors said it will be at least 12-18 months before he could play lacrosse again, but there are many factors that could complicate that prognosis.

“It’s still a touchy subject for me,” he says. “Rehab is slow, and I’m not sure when I’m going to be able to play the game I love again.”

His goal now is getting healthy enough to play at Lake Placid each summer and in his local summer league, as well as to get well enough to continue his career in the sport. Krawec had begun a coaching career on the staff at Emerson, and he had lined up camps and training sessions all summer through his Goalie Factory.

That is all on hold because of his injury, so he took a job in sales in the Boston area.

“I plan on getting back into personalized goalie training once I’m more healed up. I’m pretty passionate about it. I want to give back to the game and get back there on my feet,” he says.

The dive is romanticized as the sport’s most exciting move. “Bring back the dive” is a rallying cry that’s been on T-shirts. It’s a throwback to a fondly-remembered era in which lacrosse was bursting out of its niche into the mainstream but still had its grassroots edge.

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In 2008, Inside Lacrosse produced a segment on ESPN about the dive. “It’s the ultimate attacking move, combining sheer athleticism, perfect timing and the will to sacrifice your body,” the intro said.

Gary Gait’s “Air Gait” broke the barrier of the crease in 1988, but it was Virginia’s Doug Knight and Michael Watson who took the dive to the limit in the mid-’90s, showcasing a high-flying, acrobatic style with reckless abandon.

Citing safety concerns, the dive was outlawed in the summer after the 1998 season by the NCAA DI Lacrosse committee. In that July’s issue of Inside Lacrosse Magazine, Quint Kessenich wrote: “I have never felt threatened in the cage. And in the past six or seven years, I can’t think of a single guy that’s gotten hurt. If anything, I liked it because I knew that I’d get to be able to take a shot at the attackmen if he tried to come in on me.”

Dom Starsia was on that NCAA rules committee, which was chaired by then-Butler athletic director John Parry. Player safely, specifically for goalies, was the issue, Starsia recalls. He and Parry remembered the committee did not rely on data in the decision, but a consensus from coaches.

“The goalies were vulnerable. Guys much less talented and instinctive than Doug and Michael would come barreling down the GLE headed straight for the cage,” Starsia says.

Get rid of the dive in the MLL before someone gets seriously injured. — Ryan Flanagan (@RyanFlanagan24) May 22, 2016

Ryan Flanagan tweeted in May of 2016: “Get rid of the dive in the MLL before someone gets seriously injured.”

It turned out to be prophetic. Two months later, Michael Bocklet dove and Flanagan was hedging toward him. They collided, and Flanagan tore his ACL, MCL and meniscus and missed the rest of the season.

“The reality is, when diving, you kind of have an idea where you’re going, but you don’t really know. You don’t know who’s going to hit you. You’re probably getting pushed into a goalie whose job is to make a save. It’s throwback NFL football. You have to save guys from themselves. They’re trained to do a job, and if they don’t do that, then they’re going to lose their jobs,” Flanagan says.

As part of the league’s Players Council and member of the Rules Committee, Flanagan has unique perspective and has consistently been a voice opposing the dive. He says that the Rules Committee proposed eliminating the dive from the rulebook ahead of the 2017 season. General managers supported the move, but it was vetoed by the league’s owners, Flanagan says.

The proposal was not based on hard data, but anecdotal evidence of injuries, including Flanagan’s, and other less serious injuries from offensive players like John Haus and Andrew Hodgson that occurred during dives. Flanagan said the league agreed to track injuries around the crease in the 2017 season.

“In reality, my career is going to be shorter because of the injury I suffered. … When you’re putting a player at that risk, that’s not a play that belongs in our game,” he says.

Krawec says he was against the dive as long as he can remember, but it wasn’t a problem that affected him personally because it was illegal at most levels, from youth to high school and into college. He has played box lacrosse, so he’s used to dealing with contact, but notes that box goalies wear full pads.

“If you’re shooting a ball 100 mph and shooting from 10 yards out, how much closer do you need to get?” he says. “If you can’t score from there, maybe you should try something else.”

Ironically, Krawec is a lifelong Buffalo Sabres fan, and their 1999 Stanley Cup loss hinged on a botched crease call in triple-overtime.

Flanagan says defending the dive changes the way a player has been trained his whole playing career. Through college, defenders have the habit of turning the attackman into GLE, driving him toward the crease because traditionally that’s been “another defender.” More are getting into the habit of turning them up the field, he says, but oftentimes they panic and push them further into the netminder.

Proponents say injuries are a byproduct of a contact sport, and that the rules have eliminated one of the plays most exciting games. But there are detractors who think the famed play has no place in the sport.

“I don’t buy the argument that it’s more exciting. The MLL has it, and more people are watching college lacrosse,” says Flanagan.

“In the game of lacrosse, there are a lot of other ways to create faster play. Whether it’s a shot clock or some of the other things the committee has talked about that really speed up the game. There’s other directions they can take besides the dive,” says Krawec.