Creating TyMer Lacrosse
The reasons and goals behind creating an independent site dedicated to enhancing the knowledge of NLL fans, along with all the fears and self-doubt
The Reasons
In 2019, Tyson Geick created Lacrosse Flash, a media outlet focused on covering box lacrosse and showcasing the personalities on and off the floor. I loved it from the get-go, as it was what I thought was missing from NLL media at the time, and the group of people involved are some of my favorite people, absolutely talented beauties who bust their asses covering this sport and can adeptly defend their stances.
So when my time with the Swarm came to its end, I was more than happy to join the Flash Famiglia. During that time, I started to delve into my curiosity about team strengths and weaknesses, statistical analysis I had helped out the Swarm with until COVID ended the 2019-20 season. It became a huge Google Sheet that provided that information.
There were flaws and additional context that could’ve been provided, things I’ve worked and continued to work on this offseason to correct, but I stand by the work of last season. In a desert of NLL statistics, it was only one of three public and free nerdy oases for fans to rely on when the NLL provided zilch (the other two being LaxMetrics.com from Cooper Perkins and NLLStats.com from Graeme Perrow).
After an offseason of recovering from being burnt out and a myriad of other things, I couldn’t let the work I did not continue. So, I decided to focus on this project again, adding some additional stats to help provide more context about every teams’ performance throughout 2023-24.
The Goals
I want smarter lacrosse fans, and I want my site to entertain, educate, and clearly convey how teams are playing.
It’s really that simple. Sports are at their best when we’re having constant conversation about our favorite players and teams and can defend them. But if you’re telling me the Desert Dog are winning the NLL Cup this season based on vibes, then only one of us is having a serious conversation, and that’s not helping advance anything.
I understand that the casual sports fan works on that level of logic, but I do think part of the impetus for such simple analysis for box lacrosse has been the difficulty in finding advanced statistics, or hell, just regular statistics. With the fiasco that was NLL statistics last season, it became an opportunity for me to dive into this team stats project and provide more ammunition for NLL fans to feel good or bad about their team’s chances.
If you learned anything from what I wrote last year and felt more informed about your favorite team, then I feel I accomplished part of my goal.
If you perused the stats and decided it was too many numbers and isn’t very clear, well, yeah, I apologize, and it’s something I’m hoping will be better this season, hence this site.
The other part of my goals is selfish: I don’t mind not being the smartest person in the room, but I refuse to be the least informed. I will (unfortunately) go to great lengths to accomplish this. It’s also why I will spend time and energy keeping team depth charts public and updated throughout the season.
But seriously, I just want good conversation about the NLL. Be that with players, coaches, media analysts, or just regular fans. Let’s be smarter box lacrosse fans together.
The Fears and Self-Doubt
Don’t let the fact that I created a website for a statistics system I provide the data for in three weeks fool you into thinking I’m a reasonable, dependable, and confident person. These three weeks have been a vacillating plague of gumption peaks undercut by persistent valleys of depression wondering if there’s an audience for this nonsense (maybe), will I be able to make it through a season without being burnt out halfway through (probably not), am I overvaluing my insights and opinions (oh most definitely), am I already burnt out, etc., etc., all while updating and testing the documents I use to track all the info I track.
But I keep coming back to the same idea: I want NLL fans to be smarter and more engaged, and this is arguably the best way I can help make that happen.
So with those facts in mind, shoveling rows and rows of percentages at fans is the route I settled on again. Please feel free to reference the statistics at your leisure. I will eventually update the site to showcase these numbers in an easier to read fashion, and until that’s done, I’ll provide content diving into the numbers regularly.
I can’t promise everything will be updated timely (I’ve seven seasons of being burnt out by February backing that up), but the goal is to have weekly stats updated by Tuesday night and content over the next two or three days. There will also eventually be a newsletter (shameless plug — sign up below!) since Twitter’s run by a megalomaniac, I hate Facebook, and honestly, social media just isn’t for me.
Thank you for reading this far, and thank you for placing faith in my statistics if you use them. My only asks are that you reference where you’ve obtained the info from and use this to be more informed.
Hopefully, our paths cross at a rink this season. Whether they do or don’t, enjoy this season, and just remember I really don’t care who wins or loses — I just want to watch and talk about great lacrosse.