For the Baldwinsville girls lacrosse program, moving on from Doug Rowe’s long, historic and successful tenure was never going to be easy, for Rowe spent 26 years building the program into a consistent winner that three times reached the state Class A championship game and won it all in 2000.
At some point, though, a successor was needed – and as it turned out, the new varsity head coach, Megan Collins, wasn’t even born when Rowe got started at B’ville.
Still, at age 24, Collins has many of the right credentials as she begins her tenure with the Bees, starting with the fact that she played under Rowe’s guidance and is a Baker High School graduate.
Aside from that, lacrosse runs deep in Collins’ family. Having starred at Le Moyne College, Collins grew up with two older brothers, Nate and Mitch, who also played in the college ranks – Nate at Canisius College, Mitch at Clarkson University. Her uncle, Larry, played at Syracuse University.
After graduating from Le Moyne, Collins returned home to both teach mathematics at Ray Middle School and, in 2015, serve as a volunteer assistant coach with B’ville’s modified program. This spring, she was co-coach of the modified team at Auburn High School.
What adds to the intrigue of Collins taking over is that Rowe is not done coaching. Having retired as a teacher in the school district, Rowe was just hired to take over the program at Rome Free Academy, deciding to go beyond his club coaching duties and make the long commute to Rome to rebuild the Black Knights’ program.
They’ll do so in a Class A girls lacrosse structure slightly different from years past.
The move by the New York State Public High School Athletic Association from three to four classes in lacrosse did not change much for the B’ville boys program. But since girls teams in the state were divided into four roughly equal parts (78 schools in Class A, C and D, with 77 schools in Class B), Fayetteville-Manlius moved from Class A to B.
Otherwise, the teams in Section III Class A are the same – B’ville and RFA, joined by West Genesee, Cicero-North Syracuse, Liverpool, Utica Proctor, the Syracuse City team and the defending state champions, Christian Brothers Academy.
