LAX CON 2016

Lets tackle the obvious, as predicted Jonas and snowmagedon hit Charm City and hit it hard. US Lacrosse remained diligent on Thursday and Friday stating the convention would go off as planned. Thursday evening the cancellation/reschedules for presenters started coming in and never stopped through out the weekend. We typically like to have a mapped out schedule for the weekend but that proved to be next to impossible with all the changes. US Lacrosse said there was about a 20% chance Saturday would be canceled (thankfully that never happened). They also moved there fan-fest (which offers a significant discount on tickets) to be on both Friday and Saturday. The weather would continue to be the predominant theme through out the event. 

Upon arrival on Friday you could tell this would not be the same jam packed Convention we had become accustomed to the past few years. Looking on the positive side the hope was to get more one on one time with speakers and vendors. After checking in to our hotel we headed to the expo hall to see what the vendors had in store. You immediately got the sense that most of them were not pleased with what is for many the biggest show case of their product for the year. Our estimate was about 70% as many vendors as last year on Friday with that number dropping to about 40% on Saturday (more on that shortly). The real shame is that there are a lot of small business who invest a ton of time and resources to attend this event. Some of them have one shot to make it work and if there attempt was 2016 we find it hard to believe things went well. We had a lot of respect for the vendors who did stick it out and worked away through out the weekend to make the most of it and more importantly give the fans a great experience. Special props to String King who was still going hard the end of the day Saturday and managed to get us to purchase some of their sticks/heads. The fact they were there till the end got our brand loyalty. Check them out at https://stringking.com/, we are very happy with our purchases.

MUCH MORE AFTER THE JUMP

This brings us to the vendors who came and left early or weren't able to make it all. Obviously a lot of people had serious travel issues (coming and going) as well as financial considerations. We don't pretend to have any idea on what all of those might have been. In our opinion it would have been nice to see some of the vendors stick it out for day two (especially those based out of Maryland/Baltimore). It is a shame to see young fans eager to check out their favorite brands be disappointed. Especially when you know what it took for them to get there this past weekend. It really put a damper to see so many empty booths and vacated setups on the floor from Friday to Saturday.

One growing trend from the many vendors there was the fact that "lacrosse specific companies" are really becoming fewer and fewer. It's mainly the smaller mesh/stick manufactures. The general theme seems to be items that exists for many different sports. Helmet wraps for lacrosse helmets but we also do baseball and football decals. Video software, scheduling platforms, sub-lamination, physical training continue to grow and exist for multiple sports. Some of the lacrosse enthusiasts we met openly admit they wouldn't be able to keep their businesses thriving without the soccer portion of their sales.

A lot of great people to catch up with from years past. The Harrisburg area was strongly represented with coaches from Trinity, Hershey, Cumberland Valley, Central Dauphin, Palmyra, and Red Lion to name a few. What is great about this sport and this event is that even though these teams will do battle this spring all the coaches seem to genuinely enjoy each others company and respect one another. At the end of the day the continued relationships developed between coaches and players is the highlight of the weekend for us.

Presentations were attended by the die-hards who made it down/got stuck in Baltimore. This year was more a walk around and see what is going on when in terms of lectures and demos. Paul Rabil and Kyle Harrison were some of the big names who were very visable. Great speech from Gettysburg Bullets Coach Hank Janczyk on how Culture trumps startegy. The opportunity to learn from the best in the game was still strong despite the weather.

As we wrap up our coverage of Lax Con 2016 we certainly look forward to next year and will view this years as one of the most unique conventions we have attended. Certainly a historic storm hitting will cause problems but all in all it was still a great time. Next year should be a return to form for US Lacrosse and with all things considered everyone involved did the best they could. Attendees seemed to be happy to be there and understood going in this would be different than in years past. We strongly recommend that if you have not attended the event, or if this was your first experience with Lax Con, you make plans to be there 2017 (Jan 20-22).