The growth of high school lacrosse in Michigan has been substantial. Then again, it had nowhere to go but up.

Of the 767 MHSAA membership schools, 103 sponsored boys teams in 2009, second-lowest behind Alpine skiing (95). Nearly every school (745) has a basketball team and football draws the most athletes (45,199).

University of Denver coach Bill Tierney, who won six national championships in his 22 years as head coach of Princeton, says that for the sport's continued quantitative and qualitative growth, cooperation from the country's most popular sport will be required.

"Ohio and Florida, places that have produced such premier football talent, in my own observation, I've seen football coaches who have bought in to their kids playing lacrosse and you're starting to see better athletes come out of those areas as a result," Tierney says.

"If people can realize that a kid doesn't have to bang heads all spring, but can still increase quickness, agility, speed and there's still the banging, you still get to hit. When football coaches can buy in and see their football guys can get all the benefits without the constant banging and buy in to their best athletes playing lacrosse in spring, as opposed to spring football and track. If lacrosse starts drawing the types of athletes that Division I football gets - look out."

Athletes from the state of New York (population: 19,541,453) occupy nearly 30 percent of the rosters of the 60 NCAA Division I men's teams, compared to 7 percent taken up by those from the entire Midwest (combined population: 66,836,911).

Michigan and the other 11 states in the region have produced little more than three times (169) the amount of current DI players as the cities of Huntington, Huntington Station and Garden City (51), three Long Island communities within 30 minutes of each other with a combined population just over 200,000.

"The depth of quality of players that come out of the state is definitely increasing," says University of Michigan club coach John Paul, whose teams have won the past three consecutive MCLA national championships with mostly players from outside of Michigan. "For us to compete at a high level, we have to recruit nationally, and that means recruiting states like New York, Maryland, New Jersey."

In states like New Jersey, Maryland and New York, lacrosse has the history and infrastructure to draw the best athletes from an early age.

For the most part, lacrosse is the "other sport" for athletes in Michigan. Pioneer High School is the only team in Washtenaw County that even comes close to competing with the suburban Detroit private school powerhouses that dominate the landscape. Pioneer coach Darren Millman credits this to having a committed group for whom lacrosse became more than just a spring fling.

"It was really a culture shift, from lacrosse being a kind of fun sport that kids who played hockey, football or soccer could do in the spring as just something fun, to a commitment," says Millman. "The difference for our program, and when we were really able to make a shift to a group that would possibly be an athletic team and skilled, that shift happened when we had players and families that bought in as a primary sport and dedicated themselves to the offseason the way the hockey, soccer, football players do."

"We used to have a saying, the goalie's always the fat kid because you have the fat kid, he's doing nothing, he becomes the lacrosse goalie because lacrosse just started it gives him something to do," Dexter High School coach Brian Callanan said, jokingly. "That eventually dissipates and you draw. Once kids see it, they start coming out."

Though it's the only such case in all of Division I, Tierney's roster didn't have a single player from the New York on it this past season.

"Ten years ago, I'd be in a panic that we don't have any Baltimore or New York kids, but now you can get kids from all over," Tierney says. "It just depends from year to year now. It's kind of weird, like next year's class, we're looking at 13 or so East Coast kids. Then the next year's there's only one or two. We're getting to a point where it doesn't really matter."

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com or by phone at 734-623-2565. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.