A recent song by recording artist Avril Lavigne asks the question "Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?"
Whether or not you like it or even know it, the song was, for many months, just another icon of the teenybopper pop movement (masking itself as rock), receiving more than its fair share of radio play. It was even nominated for Best Song of the Year at this February's Grammy Awards, though fortunately that award went to another "artist."
For some odd reason, too, the song was looping in my head as I sat down to write this column.
I mention its awkwardly-phrased inquiry because it still maintains its pertinence if we are to examine the current state of the Ivy League men's and women's lacrosse title picture.
What seemed clear and, indeed, uncomplicated entering the weekend became somewhat murkier and more complicated at Saturday's close, as the women's lacrosse team defeated league-leader Dartmouth, and the men's lacrosse team, at the time leading the league, fell to second-place Dartmouth.
With their respective win and loss, the women's and men's teams find themselves essentially sitting, unsurprisingly, in first place in the league. I say essentially because both the men's and women's teams have played a game less than their first-place rivals, though wins this weekend against less-than mediocre Brown teams would forge the threesome.
To clarify things, the men sit a half game back from Cornell and are tied with Dartmouth, also a game short, and the women are a half game back from Dartmouth and Yale.
What, by Saturday's close, we might guarantee to be a three-way knot atop the league complicates things more than we or even Ms. Lavigne — rumored at one point to be dating a Princeton student — could have predicted.
***
"Uh huh, life's like this" — complicated — which is a fact that Tiger lacrosse is beginning to realize. On the men's side, Princeton has been the only name in Ivy League lacrosse for ten years. But Princeton's wheel of fortune is beginning to turn, not to say that the program is getting weaker but that all the other Ivy League schools are gaining strength. Yale's snapping of men's lacrosse's 37-game Ivy League winning streak last season in its 15-13 win at Princeton was surprising, and the Tigers 13-6 drubbing at home Saturday was equally shocking. But this is only proof that the once minor lacrosse programs at rival schools are evolving into major ones.
The women are beginning to realize that, even as defending national champions, they're far from invincible. Every school the Tigers face this year brings its 'A'-game, and their four losses compared to last year's one is proof of that. The women have had some setbacks, even an unthinkable three-game losing streak. But since the March 19 loss to Duke, the team is a red-hot 9-1, the only loss coming against Yale — another sign that the minor programs are on the way up.
Both the men's and women's teams are beginning to realize that life isn't like this — that undefeated Ivy League season and 19-game streaks which the teams' have recently enjoyed are the exception, not the norm. The pressure put on the squads by other Ivy League opponents will only make them better in time. "That's the way it is."
***
Lavigne's wrong when she says "it's all been done before," though. In the nearly 50-year history of Ivy League men's lacrosse and the 20-plus year history of women's lacrosse, there has only been league tri-champs once, in 1964 when Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard, not Cornell, shared the men's crown. Though the women have had dual champions six times in the league's history, the potential for a three-way split is certainly a novelty. This makes the one-on-one conversation infinitely more difficult, as a three-way discussion is hardly a discussion at all.
***
It's true that the Tigers are "somebody else round everyone else." The women are just 5-3 this season out of Ivy League play, the men slightly better at 5-2. In both cases, the average margin of victory is lower and the goals allowed per game is higher in non-conference games than in conference ones.
***
So things in the Ivy League are complicated. "Chill out, what are you yelling for?" By the time league play ends next Saturday, both lacrosse teams will most likely be sealed in the record books as Ivy League champs — even if they have to split the honor — and well on their way to the NCAA tournament — even if they don't receive the league's automatic bid.
And lacrosse fans, there's no need to get "frustrated," for the Tigers, even with the present complications, have just as good a chance as anyone to repeat as national champs.
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