By JOHN JEANSONNE john.jeansonne@newsday.comYesterday's NCAA Tournament first-round men's lacrosse victory is another stony tossed into the athletic brook. More concentric circles, rippling outward from what used to be a quiet little out-of-the-way place for collegiate sports, creating waves well beyond these local shores.
The bigger picture takes in more than Stony Brook University's resolute 9-7 decision over Denver. More, really, than the fact that Stony Brook long ago was awarded hosting rights to next Sunday's tournament quarterfinals, whether its team was still alive or not. (High tide is definitely on the way now.)
Because the lacrosse lads, apart for their own rainmaking - their school's highest ranking (No. 8) in the sport and first to win an NCAA Tournament game since lacrosse went to Division I in 1990 - are riding the thunder of a breakout sports year on the Long Island campus.
In 2009-10, Stony Brook has won or shared conference titles in football, men's basketball, men's soccer, women's cross country and men's lacrosse. The basketball team created a hullabaloo by earning an NIT bid for a high-visibility home game against Illinois.
"Special year," athletic director Jim Fiore said. "These are tough times to be a pessimist."
The sports operation on this 24,000-student state university campus remains a relatively humble one, compared to the great crowds and enormous budgets of the Michigans and Texases and Penn States out there. Yesterday's game at 8,136-seat LaValle Stadium, opened in 2002, drew 4,262. But that was a significant leap from the regular-season game there against the same Denver team on March 20, when only 746 spectators showed up.
A 19-member pep band was tooting away. A majority of the crowd was wearing Stony Brook red. The game was on one of the numerous ESPN national platforms - ESPNU. There were big, blue NCAA championship tournament logos painted on the field.
It may not yet be an Eastern Long Island colossus, but the trajectory of athletic success and what Fiore calls "building the brand" is decidedly on the rise for a college that was opened in 1957 and, as per SUNY edict, did not award athletic scholarships until 1986. Even until Fiore arrived in 2003, he said, there had been no intention to go "big time."
It was at that point that then-university president Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny, summoning Fiore from his post at Princeton, informed him that "she had expectations," he said. "She wanted to play Texas in football!"
Perhaps that was because Kenny was a Texas alum. Fiore, who grew up in Long Beach and played college football for Hofstra, said he came to Stony Brook not even aware if the school had a logo, or exactly a settled-upon name. SUNY-Stony Brook? Stony Brook State?
Fiore hired former University of Connecticut assistant Steve Pikiell for men's basketball in 2005 and former Trinity (Conn.) football coach Chuck Priore in 2006. Football (63 scholarships), men's and women's basketball (15 apiece) and lacrosse (12.5) all are funded at the NCAA maximum, and Fiore is convinced that Stony Brook has become "the best choice" for a college "if you're serious about sports and want to stay on Long Island.''
He added, "When I was growing up, even 15 years ago, there was one choice [Hofstra]. Now we're the best choice. If people come here to see what we have, they'll come back. We averaged 4,500 for football, and now that Hofstra has dropped football, that will help us. And we are the state school."
Fiore says Stony Brook athletes have a combined grade-point average of 3.0, and his pitch further includes the assertion that his teams offer fans "cheap entertainment" - $10 a ticket. To have the lacrosse team playing at home next Sunday in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals - it would be called, with some audacity, the Elite Eight if this were basketball - "means we've arrived," Fiore said. "As an institution, as an athletic program, we can play with any team in the country.
"We're winning the recruiting battles, we've changed the culture. Alumni are coming back, wearing red. It's taken us seven years, but we're doing that."
Stony Brook as "jock school"?
"It's becoming that way," lacrosse coach Rick Sowell merrily agreed after yesterday's victory. "I'm just glad to join the party. The football guys always are coming by my office and wishing us luck. And the institution has done a terrific job."
Stony Brook's name in lacrosse had been spreading just far enough, and wide enough, that Sowell was able to recruit a handful of key players from Western Canada - "You can do a whole study on the influx of Canadian players in the game," Denver coach Bill Tierney said. "That's what's going on out there."
Plus Long Island kids long have played county lacrosse championship games at LaValle Stadium, helping to make Stony Brook what Fiore called a "location destination."
When the final horn sounded Saturday, Sowell, shaking his head, said he "couldn't believe it. The beginning of the year, knowing the quarterfinals would be here and there was some talk that Stony Brook would be there playing, I couldn't relate.
"To be sitting here, one of the final eight, that's just too much to comprehend. There was a little pressure, starting in February when a lot of our league wasn't doing well, and then last week we got tight, we unraveled a little bit."
Sowell still was having to take things a game at a time. "Our one goal at the beginning of the year," he said, "was just to get back to the America East championship game" that it lost in 2009. "You know, there was a time not so long ago when Albany was a machine , then UMBC took over. There were times when I'm thinking, 'How am I going to get this done in a couple of years?' I'm thinking, 'No way.'
"But about January, when the basketball team was doing well and the football team had finished a great season, I'm chomping at the bit. I felt I had a winning lottery ticket with this team. Now it's like: This is good."
To Fiore's mind, "You don't have to say, 'Where's Stony Brook?' anymore; 'What's Stony Brook?' "
Sowell agreed. "We've got a good thing going here at Stony Brook. I guess, get used to it. We're not going away."
