NSU and Barry University starting women's lacrosse programs for the 2027 season

Miami Herald

15-07-2025

Barry University and Nova Southeastern University have joined the lacrosse movement.
There are approximately 935 NCAA lacrosse teams – 538 for women and 397 for men. There are also at least 200 club programs and an unspecified number that compete in the junior-college and NAIA ranks.
Indeed, lacrosse is considered the NCAA's fastest-growing sport as the number of schools competing has doubled over the past 20 years.
In addition, lacrosse will make its return as an Olympic sport in the 2028 Los Angeles Games. It will be the first time since 1908 that lacrosse will be an Olympic-medal sport.
Also, Florida State added women's lacrosse for the spring of 2026.
Locally, the Sunshine State Conference will now have 10 of their 11 schools playing women's lacrosse, starting in the spring of 2027. That includes Barry and NSU.
As for men's lacrosse, there will be nine schools playing the sport once Barry begins action in 2027. NSU has no current plans for men's lacrosse.
Here's a closer look at how NSU and Barry are handling lacrosse:
▪ NSU last week announced the hiring of Heather Coppola as its new women's lacrosse coach.
By the way, she's no relation to Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola – 'I wish,' she said.
Heather Coppola comes to NSU after five years at another NCAA Division II team, the University of Mount Olive in North Carolina. In those five years, Mount Olive went 68-23 overall, including 42-1 in conference play.
Given that success, why start all over again at NSU?
'We have all the tools here to be successful,' Coppola said of NSU. 'There's a championship standard here, and a recipe for success.
'I can't find a negative at NSU.'
Coppola, a 35-year-old native of the Syracuse (N.Y.) area, previously served as an assistant at the Division I level at Robert Morris. But she said Division II is the perfect fit for her.
Since being hired on July 7, Coppola has been recruiting some of the hottest areas in the country for lacrosse talent – Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
'Players want to come to where it's warm,' Coppola said of her recruiting strategy. 'We're also in a major metropolitan area.'
Coppola said an average college lacrosse roster has between 27 and 35 players, and she plans to be in that range. She is recruiting freshmen from the Class of 2026, and she will be active in the transfer portal, too.
And Coppola won't limit herself to the U.S. Australia, New Zealand, England and Canada are other hotspots she will recruit.
Coppola, who has already secured a Fort Lauderdale apartment, will also soon hired one full-time and one part-time assistant coach.
▪ Dr. Scott Smith, Barry's athletic director, said he is hoping to hire lacrosse coaches by January. Recruiting will start once the coaches are hired, and the players will be enrolled by the fall of 2026.
Barry said the lacrosse programs will have lofty goals.
'We want to bring a lacrosse national championship to South Florida,' Smith said. 'By the fourth or fifth year, we want to be competitively nationally.'
Smith also said that since 2023 Barry has added 10 sports, including men's volleyball and women's beach volleyball. The other eight sports are: lacrosse, swimming, cross-country and track (both men and women for each).
'Our student-athlete enrollment has more than doubled,' Smith said. 'But it's not just about enrollment. The quality and the caliber of the student-athletes that we bring in – they retain well, they persist in their graduation rates.
'Our academic-success rate over the past 10 years is 90 percent or better among student-athletes. And our student-athletes overall have grade-point averages that are higher than the regular student population.'