Lydia Dexter, the women’s lacrosse coach at St. Joseph’s College of Maine, attended the Division I women’s lacrosse championship at Gillette Stadium with some of her players last month.

They stuck around for the men’s Division II and III finals, which also were on May 25 at the home of the New England Patriots, and saw firsthand the perks of playing at an NFL stadium. 

That opportunity, however, is not afforded to the women’s teams at the top of Division II and III lacrosse, who play their championship games at smaller colleges. 

The difference in venues raises concerns over equity between men’s and women’s teams in college athletics. In a news conference following her team’s loss to Middlebury College in the women’s DIII final in May, Tufts head lacrosse coach Courtney Shute criticized the NCAA for holding the game at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, which lacks the amenities, accessibility and drawing power of a pro football stadium.

“This is a hard place to get to,” said Shute, pointing out that the Tufts men’s team played its championship at Gillette. “We had an incredible crowd, but our men are playing for a national championship in front of all their alums today.”

Many Maine lacrosse coaches echoed Shute’s sentiments, saying a combined championship is way overdue.  

“The men’s game is often part of a larger Championship Weekend in major stadiums, while the women’s is typically held at smaller campus sites,” said Kaitlyn Daly, women’s lacrosse coach at Thomas College in Waterville. “For the men, the event is often bundled with DI and DII games, which brings more centralized attention and funding.” 

That could change as early as 2029. This fall, the NCAA will release bid specifications for this format, allowing venues to submit bids to host a championship weekend for all three women’s divisions.  

Finally, Maine coaches and players said, men’s and women’s teams will be treated equitably, at least when it comes to championship venues. 

“I know for a fact a championship feels different when you have more support there,” said Devon Chipman, a freshman goalkeeper with the Tufts women’s team. She described feeling “less valued” because of her gender.  

“We just have to be thoughtful that we’re giving our student athletes, both the men and the women, the best experience we can,” Colby College women’s lacrosse coach Karen Henning said. “I really do think that a lot of people care, it’s more about not knowing enough about the situation.”

Dexter added, “Everyone is working hard, everyone is sacrificing, everyone wants to win the national championship on the biggest stage. There shouldn’t be another stage because someone else feels where value is at.”

The officials who oversee the women’s lacrosse championship say there are misconceptions around equity when it comes to venues.

“While on the public side, it looks like we’re not doing anything, or we’re choosing to do certain things over other things, or we’re choosing not to do combined on purpose, it’s just not that way,” said Kevin Alcox, NCAA assistant director of championships and alliances.

Alcox said that he is hopeful that holding all three women’s championship games at the same venue on the same day is possible so officials can directly compare the experiences of men’s and women’s teams. 

LONGSTANDING CONCERNS OVER EQUITY

This is not the first time equity concerns have been raised in the NCAA.

In 2021, Sedona Prince, a player at Texas Christian University, posted a video showing the disparity between men’s and women’s training facilities at the NCAA basketball tournament.

In response, the NCAA retained the law firm Kaplan Hecker and Fink to investigate disparities between men and women’s athletics. Phase I of the report focused on the 2021 Division I basketball championships. A second phase of the report, published in October 2021, contained a gender equity review with recommendations on the NCAA’s 84 other championships.

The report said the lacrosse championship structure and venue contributed to disparate student-athlete experiences, describing it as having “the most consequential differences between men’s and women’s championships.”  

Beginning in 2017, the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s championships have been held at Gillette Stadium. This year, the D1 women saw a record-breaking attendance of 14,423.  

Colby College, making its first appearance in the women’s Final Four, was one of the teams that played in the DIII championships at Roanoke College.

“I think that accessibility piece was noticeable,” Henning said. “Not being in a major city was felt in this situation in particular.”

When considering equity, the NCAA said, it should be noted that, unlike the men’s combined championships, women’s DII and DIII championships include semifinal games, which are played a few days prior to the championship, allowing teams like Colby to receive the benefits of a championship experience even if they don’t make the final. 

The smaller venues and fewer teams for the women’s games also allow for a more personalized experience, they say, with more access to facilities.

Women’s players described receiving NCAA merchandise and custom team gear, and having an ice cream stand after pregame practice.

However, Colby player Maggie Mahoney said there was a lack of penalty clocks, and Chipman, the Tufts goalie, said that there was no banquet for the women’s DII and DIII teams.  

The NCAA is also limited by what bids it receives, Alcox said.

The NCAA championship sports committees select championship sites years in advance. These committees consist of campus and conference administrators and coaches who assess host site bids and make decisions on where future championships will be held.  

“We’re kind of bound by what we get in regard to bids,” said Alcox. 

“We definitely run into an issue with lacrosse based on the timing of year being Memorial Day weekend,” he said. “A lot of potential hosts don’t have the manpower to put on an event like this.”

The NCAA’s equity assessment centers on the fact that men’s championships are given the benefit of professional NFL facilities. This gives the “Division I, II, and III men student-athletes the benefits of better audio and visual setups, more fan suites and luxury boxes, better locker rooms and facilities, and more support staff.”

The Tufts women’s lacrosse alumni network rallied behind Shute’s claims, sending a letter to the NCAA demanding championship gender equity while citing the equity report along with attendance facts and figures.  

“The NCAA is perpetuating an ideology that a woman and man who make it to the same final stage in their respective tournaments in the same division playing the same sport (and in the case of Adelphi, Tampa, and Tufts this year — at the same school) deserve drastically stratified levels of visibility, accessibility, pomp and circumstance … on the basis of gender alone,” the letter claimed.

The letter was signed by over 1,300 NCAA coaches, current and former NCAA athletes and fans, collected in less than 48 hours.  

PATH TO A ‘CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND’

The push to create a women’s combined championship has been in the works for years.

Starting with the 2029 bid, the new specifications make way for a combined championship for the first time.  

Gillette Stadium submitted a bid to host all six NCAA lacrosse championships together in 2025 and 2026. However, committees decided to host the DII and DIII women’s championships in Salem, Virginia. Only the DI Women’s Lacrosse committee which, after having discussions with the men’s DI committee and “the local organizing host to make the collaboration work,” joined the men this year, just as they had in 2017. 

Alcox and Jeff Siegel, the athletic director at Rochester Institute of Technology and chair of the DIII Women’s Lacrosse Committee, said the committees rejected the bid because there were no official bid specifications for hosting a combined six-game championship.  

“We just felt it was better to wait for the next bid cycle and go through a normal process,” Alcox said. “I’m hopeful that we get the bids we need and that we can make this a reality. I’ve been with women’s lacrosse for six, seven years and it’s been my primary goal to have this happen for Division III.”  

On top of concern for rushing the combined format, “the Division I Men’s Lacrosse Committee raised logistical concerns about the idea of including Division II and III women’s lacrosse in a joint championship,” the 2021 NCAA report said. 

According to the 2021 report by Kaplan Hecker and Fink, an NCAA staff member familiar with the host process described the men’s committee as being concerned about the “significant scale of hosting six championships,” which would involve at least 16 teams over one weekend.  

Scheduling and practice times were also listed as areas of concern, particularly in regard to hosting on Memorial Day weekend.  

At least some coaches weren’t buying it.

“It seems like it’s an easy excuse for it to be logistics,” said Dexter, the St. Joseph’s coach. “At a venue like Gillette Stadium, it isn’t valid. That’s a venue that hosts very extravagant events.”

The decision not to play all the games at one venue had consequences for viewership.

In 2025, the DII and DIII men’s championship games were played on the same day following the women’s DI championship at noon. DII played at 4 p.m. and DIII played at 7 p.m. with both games streamed on the NCAA’s website. This scheduling allowed for men’s teams to attract audience members from the women’s DI championship.  

Gillette’s proposal to host all six championships encouraged this kind of format; the men’s DII and DIII games would follow a women’s DI championship, while women’s DII and DIII would follow the men’s DI championship.

Alcox and Siegel explained that because the men’s DI championship is on Memorial Day Monday, it would be difficult to schedule women’s games later that day due to travel and staffing concerns.  

Additionally, the women’s DI game was played at the same time as the women’s DIII championship game. Both took place on May 25 at noon, with DI streamed on ESPN and DIII on NCAA.com, so lacrosse fans couldn’t watch both.

“Why in the world did they schedule the championship game at the same time?” said David Keenan, the head women’s lacrosse coach at Maine Maritime Academy.

According to Alcox, committees “don’t always know when they’re gonna do ESPN games” until DII and DIII games are set. “If we know Division I schedule early enough, we can make adjustments because it does lead to more eyeballs on each individual game rather than splitting games,” he said.  

Since 2018, the women’s D1 championship game had been played the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend at noon. 

“The viewership is going to be lower than it would have been. What would the attendance have been if all three games were on the same day? What would that have looked like?” Keenan remarked. “It was going to be way north of 14,000 … How much? Who knows, because we haven’t done it.” 

Staff Writer Zoe Schaedle, a Sun Journal intern, plays lacrosse at Bates College in Lewiston