Oct. 12, 2001

College Park, Md. - Maryland Media Relations staff member Brandon Fastman had the chance to sit down with the new men's lacrosse head coach, Dave Cottle, who arrives at the University of Maryland after a very successful tenure at Loyola in Baltimore.

You've been quoted as saying that coaching at Maryland is your dream job. Explain why.
I grew up in Baltimore. I went to school in Salisbury. I started watching lacrosse in eleventh grade. Some of my peers rooted for Hopkins. I rooted for Maryland. While I was playing in the '70's, Maryland was in its hay day. They won a championship in '73 and another one in '75. I had a lot of friends that played at Maryland. If I could have played at a second school, I would have played for a school like Maryland.

Can you describe what it was like to be on the coaching staff of the 1994 world championship lacrosse team?
That was interesting. That was a situation where if we handicapped the other teams, we knew we had something special. We were tremendous defensively. It was definitely a marathon and not a sprint. We had a different scrimmage every weekend from Massachusetts down to Washington, D.C. For the guys that played who had families and for the coaches who had families, it was a long journey that culminated with spending two weeks in a college dorm in Manchester, England. It was a great experience and I'm glad I had a part in it. You are allowed to do it once and you don't get the chance to coach players of that caliber very often in your career.

The popularity of lacrosse is growing around the world as well as around the country. Do you see this as changing the college lacrosse scene in the near future?
It is growing, but it's not growing at the college level. Male students are at a premium now at a lot of colleges and universities and when you look to add sports, lacrosse would be a lot cheaper to add than football (for example). So what I think you will see in the next few years is a bunch of schools adding lacrosse to bring in more freshmen male students. The growth of high school and youth lacrosse has been pretty consistent. The only part of lacrosse that hasn't been growing is college lacrosse.

At the same time, Maryland is still probably the most fertile recruiting region.
The state of Maryland, Long Island, and upstate New York are heads and tails above everybody, although the Philadelphia area is really improving. There are some good athletes and good students there. But this is an area that we have to take care of business in. We have to be very good recruiting in this area. We have a lot to offer a young man who is from this area.

The previous coach, Dick Edell, was an institution at Maryland. How do you think his spirit will live on with the program, and at the same time, what changes will we see?
I've coached against Dick Edell. I've known him for a long time. When I was a player, he was a coach at the University of Baltimore, so I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. One of the negatives of taking a job like this is following such a coaching legend. You are not taking over a program that has been mismanaged. You are taking over a program that's been at the top of its game for years. Having said that, there are certain things that I believe in as a coach. I will not try to change anything for the sake of change, but I will make some changes that hopefully will help the program. The goals of the program are going to stay the same: NCAA playoffs, Final Four, national championship every year here at the University of Maryland.

Would you like to elaborate on the changes at all?
Offensively, there are some things that I think can be done that will up the scoring. If you look at last year's team, they were an absolutely tremendous defensive team. My goal is to try to find ways for them to score more. You can change that through execution, you can change that through style of play and pace, you can change that through increasing the importance of riding. Those are three areas that we are going to focus on throughout the rest of the fall.

Do you play Loyola this year?
Loyola and Maryland have only played twice since 1982. They played in '89 and again in the playoffs in '98. It's a game that I think that now with Loyola having such a successful program would be good. We are possibly looking to change the schedule some. We'd like to add Syracuse, we'd like to play a game in Long Island, and we'd like to add one more quality opponent. I think the University of Maryland should have the toughest schedule in the country if we are going to try to attract the best players in the country. We already have established opponents in the ACC and rivalries with Hopkins and Navy. It would be great if we could have the toughest schedule in lacrosse and still play at a very high level.