We’ve spent many months working on the latest version of Florida Lacrosse New’s new site and while many of the features you’ve come to expect are still here you will find enhancements to some and a new focus on becoming a better place to centralize information across the state.

You will see we simplified the look of the home page, eliminating sections on that page and instead going the route of highlighting the last 14 stories posted to the site instead of 4. We found over the years that certain days had so many stories to post during the season that some of those would get missed if you didn’t check in multiple times during the day. With this format we are going to ensure that if you check in one time a day you will see the full plate of news posted that day. You will also see at the bottom a section titled From The Vault. Periodically we will take a look back over the years to put up columns that were popular and worth a second reading. One example of that was a game recap I wrote back when Saint Andrew’s hosted a Bishop Timon team with one big name player to be.

We’ve simplified our college section to make it simpler with two different dropdowns for the NCAA/IWLCA and the MCLA/NAIA/WCLA articles on separate pages. And by clicking on ‘College’ instead of the dropdowns you will see a separate page for national polls at the college level plus our popular section on Florida Kids at the D1 Level. If we can find the appropriate resources we would like to expand that beyond Division One.

The High School Page pretty much stays the same, with FLN Polls (and no, I haven’t forgotten the Final Class 2A Poll!) and National HS Polls (mostly the latest IL poll that refuses to consider undefeated Florida state champs in favor of northeast teams with 7 losses) and the four geographically broken down Boys and Girls sections. We have added The Referee’s Whistle, a section where will bring you information of rules interpretations and information as the governing bodies adjust their thoughts, making it easy for players, coaches and parents to find information. Hopefully that will become a popular landing spot so we can cut down on the sillier crap that comes from the stands.

The Recruiting Page is also basically the same information and we are going to delve deeper into the Recruiting process for more insights from around the lacrosse world. One BIG difference is what you are going to see with the Questionnaire itself, as they will delve more into the players themselves, as the change in social media influence showed us that the kids are more interested in reading about their peers in a way that we didn’t capture as well lately.

For the kids who filled out the old questionnaire and haven’t had them posted yet I will post as is and give you the option of filling out the new one and replacing the old one.

On the Youth Tab we are looking to provide a centralized place where tournaments, showcases, etc., can be placed for the greater lacrosse community. I can verify that NO ONE in this state has a FULL List of the events and that makes it pretty hard for me to plan where I might go on weekends when the season is over! If you want to provide an event for the calendar please email me at lee@floridalacrossenews.com.

The Parent’s Corner section will evolve into a place to share information for parents on many levels, whether something as simple as equipment vendors, an introduction to the sport and it’s rules, information on how to enjoy the game more, etc. The Club Tab under Youth will evolve into a place where club programs can advertise themselves for tryouts and links to their home pages.

The Community section is where our new FLN Cares information will be, where we will help raise funds for those in need.

There will be a Store page too in the future where FLN will highlight products, memorabilia, affiliate marketing deals, travel deals and other products or services what the lacrosse community would find of interest.

We hope you enjoy the new site and it’s new focus and this is just the start of changes! The YouTube channel had a successful launch, with many of the videos being viewed over 400 times. We are in the process of talking to an online sports network about being their content provider for the state and that would be a great leap forward for us and the sport!