The second part of our interview with Coach Paul illustrates the happenings behind the scenes of the nation’s top program.

If you missed part one, catch up here.

412: Even with the development of the league in terms of improved play and more exposure, there is still a stigma surrounding the MCLA that it’s just a beer league. Is that a hurdle you must overcome when you are recruiting a player who might not be familiar with the league?

JP: The word is definitely spreading about us. We do recruit hard. A big part of what we do is educating people about what we are doing and what the league is doing. Now, it’s more about even unintentionally dismissive comments that you hear. I can’t tell you how many times Michigan fans, who have nothing to do with lacrosse, ask, “when are they going to make it a real team?”

You hear that and the hair on your neck stands up. I always answer it as nicely  as I can. I think we do have a real team.

412: When speaking with a recruit, do you have to walk the line between offending a recruit who is looking at NCAA schools in terms of asking, would you like to win a title at Michigan or finish last in the Ivy League?

JP: We really don’t recruit that way. I absolutely don’t believe in negative recruiting and we don’t ever compare ourself in that way. What we compare is the university because most of those recruits are looking at small schools.

We try to bring recruits in on a football weekend. How you are going to feel about the school for the rest of your life is a pretty big sales pitch.  We compare our program to everyone else not competitively but organizationally. When I speak with a recruit I’m not talking about how we stack up competitively, I’m talking about how we stalk up organizationally. The kind of coaching they are going to get. The kind of services we provide outside of coaching. The kind of people they are going to be around. That’s how we sell our program.

412: When you attend a recruiting event, what is the process of identifying a recruit? Do you look first for a player who is good enough or first try to find out if they are willing to play club lacrosse?

JP: Ninety percent of the kids we look at at recruiting events have contacted us. We don’t find a lot of kids at recruiting events because our academic requirements are so tough. Most of the kids at the camps aren’t academically qualified to come to Michigan anyway. Its a waste of our resources to contact 300 kids when only 30 are real viable candidates for us.

The other really important part about recruiting is just being there. I can’t tell you how many people contact us and say, “Did I really just see Michigan there and now that I know you’re there I’m interested.”

412: You touched on this briefly in terms of mentioning the need to recruit academically qualified players. What kind of admissions pull do you have?

JP: Officially, we don’t. Unofficially, we get some help. Anybody that’s playing on this team has to be academically qualified to be at Michigan. We’re not getting someone in who wouldn’t have had a shot without us.

412: Aside from you, how many coaches are full time employees?

JP: We have one full time assistant coach, Ken Broschart. Our director of operations, Joe Hennessy, is full time. Our trainer, Holli Schoonover, is full time but she’s not hired by us. The rest of our staff is part time.

None of the coaching staff is hired by the university. They are paid by the team and none of them are getting what you would remotely consider a living wage. They are sacrificing a lot to do this and they are doing nothing on the side. This is all they do.

412: I’ve heard the player dues are as high as $3,000. Can you talk about that?

JP: They are $3500.

412: At what point in the recruiting process, do you discuss a player’s financial obligations? What happens if a player cannot meet those requirements?

JP: Right away and interestingly enought that conversation has changed the last two or three years. Kids at the elite level are so used to playing on  travel teams all year and the total cost is often $5,000 and more when you factor in travel and equipment. When we tell kids they just have to pay $3500 to play high level lacrosse, the first reaction is usually, “wow, that’s a bargain.” It’s really surprising but that’s what we’ve been hearing. We make sure to get it out right away so parents know what’s coming.

By the same token, if we have a family that can’t cover the full dues but we want their son on the team, we have people who cover portions of those dues.  We would never turn someone away if they can’t pay dues.

412: Salisbury and Stevenson get chastised all the time for over recruiting. Does that happen at Michigan or do you have a good idea heading into fall ball of what the roster will look like?

JP: No. We recruit the guys we want on the team. We host open tryouts and usually pick up a few guys that way. But, we have a pretty good sense of what the team is going to be by early summer for the next year. So, if you asked me again in two months, I’d have a good sense of next year’s roster.

412: I’ve heard Michigan has the highest budget of any lacrosse team regardless of level.

JP: It depends on how you quantify that. If you take out full coaching salaries and scholarships then I would guess if we aren’t the highest then we are pretty close.

412: What percentage of the budget is covered by player dues?

JP: Of our actual cash operating budget, the player dues cover a third. But, if you add in items that many other teams have to spend money on that we don’t, through sponsorships and items we get for free, the dues only cover 15% of the budget.

412: How responsible are the players for fundraising?

Not at all. They don’t do a thing.

412: Do players have access to varsity weight rooms?

JP: No.

412: Do players have access to academic support?

JP: Yes.

412: What does the new lacrosse building say about the school’s support for the program?

JP: Nothing. We are doing it 100% on our own and it was privately funded. It’s being built on private property right next to athletic department property so its in a perfect location.

It’s safe to say the university is very aware and committed to supporting lacrosse in the future. But, right now, we’re doing the financial things.

412: Do you feel like there is added pressure to win to justify the support the school has given and to help the cause in the future?

JP: It’s fair to say our success has created a buzz on campus all the way up to the highest levels. At this time, which is critical for us with a new athletic director who started a month ago, we need to keep that buzz going. We’re not thinking we need to win this so we can be a Division 1 team or so we can get more support. But, it’s certainly there and it helps us.

412: Is the ultimate goal to be a Division 1 team?

JP: It is. I never would have said that a few years ago with my professional background. I knew the realities here. I knew our old AD was not interested in that. So, it wasn’t something worth pursuing for us.

There are a lot of things coming together that make it a realistic goal. That doesn’t mean its going to happen. It just means the stars are aligning and we have a small window in the next year or two to see if we can make something happen.

412: Increased exposure and respect for the MCLA has paralleled your program’s achievements in the last two years. If Michigan makes the jump to the NCAA, do you think there will be a let down in the league’s progress?

JP: I have no idea. There are certainly other programs in the MCLA that are capable of creating the national attention we get. A lot of that attention comes from the fact that we are a major BCS school and everyone knows Michigan. It’s also do to the fact that Michigan is a really popular school on the east coast.

Other schools have that capability but they’ll have to step up their presence in the lacrosse world. They’ll have to network and become more PR conscious. It does nothing but benefit us to be out in front of everybody.

412: Do you think the MCLA should be a minor league for teams trying to go to the NCAA?

JP: I think every program has to figure that out on their own. We are very aware that a Division 1 team here would serve different student athletes than we have now. Our purpose is to serve our current student athletes.

It depends on where you see lacrosse going. For us, its the logical next step. Our concern candidly is that we out grow the MCLA. I’d dont want to make it sound like nobody can ever beat us, of course they can. But, we don’t want to turn it into the Cal rugby situation were you have one competitive game every year, if that.

That wouldn’t be good for us or the MCLA. I can see things heading in that direction. So it makes sense for us that going D1 is the next step.

Editor’s note: For information on the Cal rugby team

412: Do you tell recruits that they might replaced in the next few years if the school goes D1?

JP: Yes, we make that clear. We’ve never told a recruit we are going D1. We tell them that if they come here they are coming to play for our MCLA team. Just this year we began talking about our push for D1. We try to make it really clearly that nothing is certain in their future if they come here.

412:  If the D1 jump is pushed back for several years, what does the league have to do to keep pace with Michigan?

JP: There’s two parts to that. One, there’s no assurance we can keep moving forward. We’re getting to the edge of the cliff. I’m not sure we can sustain the program forever at the level we’re at. We depend on huge financial donations every year and that’s a scary way to operate. There’s no assurance without an enormous endowment which we don’t have. Our program will have to reign back in the next few years if the D1 move doesn’t happen.

But if we were able to maintain that momentum and we did stay in the MCLA and other teams did have to pick it up, then the biggest advice I give people is to take a long view. It’s taken us 14 years with me being here and there were almost 15 years of development before me. You have to chip away at it a step at a time.

The most important things that we did to get here, that other teams have to do, are one, networking constantly throughout the university community so everybody knows about you and maybe you develop supports and two, recruiting. Through recruiting, you’re getting kids who are invested in the program before they get here and more importantly, you’re getting parents who are invested in the program before they arrive. That makes all the difference in the world in the support you can ask for.

412: It seems like a situation where you don’t except support because you are a club team so you don’t ask. But, you’ll never know if you don’t ask.

JP: I was in professional fund raising for seven years and the first lesson they taught us was, you have to ask. It seems obvious but a lot of people don’t ask so they never get the help.

412: What team outside of the top 20 do you see becoming the next power house?

JP: It’s hard to tell. On one hand the big BCS schools have a lot of advantages just because of their name but they have to learn to utilize those advantages. But, they also have some disadvantages because of the bureaucracy they have to go through to get anything done.

On the other hand, a smaller school like Chapman, can get a lot done because they are so small. The networking they have to do within the university to grow isn’t as extensive and there aren’t so many people knocking on the same doors as you.

It’s hard to say. It could be a big school. It could be a small school. The important thing is having someone there long term coaching who takes a really active role and learns how to get the most out of the resources of the school.

412: What kind of black eye do you think the league has now as a result of what happened in Colorado this week?

JP: I think that stuff’s constant. I’m not sure how much the rest of the lacrosse world pays attention to those kind of things in the MCLA.

It’s a concern. For teams to take the next step, they need great coaches. To attract great coaches, you need something that’s going to draw them to your program. In many cases, you’re asking guys to move their life and maybe their family like any other job. In return for that, there has to be a commitment to that coach. And that’s what I think a lot of the MCLA programs will have to find a way to overcome because there are so many road blocks at the club level.

Any coach doing his due diligence is going to ask those questions. What assurances do I have that I’m going to have an opportunity to do what I think needs to be done?

412: I think you’ve answered a lot of questions for us. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to clear the air about?

JP: No, I think that was pretty good. The number one thing is that we aren’t a whole that different than any other club program. We have just found a way over the course of a long time to get support in certain areas that have helped us and in others we still haven’t. We’re fighting the same fight as everyone else.

412: It seems like the program popped up out of no where with the national championships but what people don’t realize is the hard work that has gone into the program for years prior to this run.

JP: And more than anything, it’s not just the hard work. It’s having a team full of players that buy in to the accountability that they have to have. That was a tough sell for a year. We lost a lot of players in 2008 as we started to make those changes. In the long run, it made us stronger.

412: Thanks for your time, Coach. We’ll have this ready to go next week.

JP: I appreciate it. Good luck with the rest of your season, Peter.

We are very grateful that Coach Paul took some time out on game day to our answer our questions. There aren’t secrets or get rich quick schemes. Their program was built by hard working people who cared.

What can you do to help your club team to improve?