Quality over quantity: Canadians dominate NCAA lacrosse All-Americans

Denver's Mark Mathews (#22) and Cam Flint (#18) join Canada's All-American honourees.

Canadians have been making a significant impact in NCAA lacrosse for a while. Gary and Paul Gait dominated with Syracuse 20 years ago, Orangeville, ON's Brodie Merrill was regarded as the best defender in the game in his time at Georgetown, and Whitby, ON's Zack Greer is the NCAA's all-time leading goalscorer.

Still, it's impressive to look at Canada's relative dominance when the NCAA recognizes its best players, as it did this week with it's All-American list.

All-American status is conferred on a select few each year. Despite only having 118 players in Division 1 lacrosse, Canadians took 10 spots on the All-American list. They included:

• First Team: Kevin Crowley, Stony Brook University

• Second Team:Stephen Keogh, Syracuse University; Mark Matthews, University of Denver

• Third Team: Jordan McBride, Stony Brook University

• Honorable Mention: Carter Bender, University of Hartford;Jay Card, Hofstra University; Trevor Moore, Robert Morris University; Bryan Neufeld, Siena College; Cam Flint, University of Denver; Jason Noble, Cornell University

Consider that there are 61 Division 1 teams, with upwards of 50 players per team. That's a talent pool in the 3000 range. Of those, 92 make the All-American list - or 3 per cent of the total players. On the other hand, 8.5% of eligible Canadians were recognized - almost three times as many.

Take out the honorable mentions and the number gets even more impressive. There are 41 total players on the first, second and third teams. Four are Canadian. That's 10% of the list - even though Canada only has less than 4% of the total number of players.

We won't even get into Division II, where Shayne Jackson, Riley Loewen, and Chris Cudmore made the cut despite a heavy pro-New York bias from voters.

the All-American recognition adds to Canada's NCAA prestige this year. When the finalists for the Tewaaraton Award, which recognizes the top player in the NCC, were announced in April, there were four Canadians (Keogh, Card, Jackson and Crowley) on the list of 25. That's a full 16% of the finalists from north of the 49th (none made thew final list of five players, though).

The accolades can continue this weekend for Mathews and Flint, whose Denver team has made an unlikely run to the NCAA Final Four. they'll be joined by teammmates Kurtis Green and Jeremy Noble, as well as Virginia's Matt and Mark Cockerton and Garrett Ince, to provide Canadian flavour to the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

While all this is happenening, we get word that Dave Huntley, the coach of Canada's 2006 World Championship field lacrosse team and former coach of the Toronto Nationals, is being inducted into the U.S. National Lacrosse Hall of Fame as a "Truly Great Player" or his accomplishments in the 1970s with Johns Hopkins.

It's a good week to be a Canadian lacrosse fan.

Follow Andrew McKay on Twitter @apmckay