Premier Lacrosse League begins Friday with New York Atlas playing a doubleheader

Lacrosse fans fired up for the first round of the NCAA Tournament will find there’s a lot more than college lacrosse available for their viewing pleasure this weekend.

The Premier Lacrosse League’s season begins Friday in Utah, with a doubleheader that sees the home team Utah Archers facing the California Redwoods in the opener, at 8 p.m. on ESPN+, while the defending champion New York Atlas take on the Carolina Chaos in the nightcap at 10:30 p.m., also on ESPN+.

Yes, the PLL season this year is starting before the college lacrosse season is over. It’s just one of a number of changes for the professional outdoor lacrosse league, which will be playing its eighth season in 2026. The biggest is the inaugural season of the new women’s professional league, the WLL, which begins play next weekend in Rhode Island, but the new schedule is a big deal, too.

“There's three big things that heading into 2026 that gets us excited,’’ PLL co-founder Paul Rabil said this week in a telephone interview with Newsday. “The first is the launch of the WLL. The second is the renewal of our ESPN partnership, extended five years, with an accompanying investment. And then the third is schedule expansion.’’

The schedule has been expanded from 10 games to 12, and shifted to start on the second weekend in May, rather than the first weekend in June. The move, Rabil said, is essentially because that’s what the fans wanted. Lacrosse fans, he said, are used to seeing college, high school and youth lacrosse played in the spring, and they want their pro lacrosse in the spring as well.

“We're very attuned to what our fans tell us,’’ Rabil said. “Our fans want us more in the spring and the early part of the summer. They tell us time and again that they don't want us in football season.’’

Changing the schedule was not easy, though. In fact, Rabil said, “it's actually an impossible scenario to get exactly right.’’

Starting the season earlier means college players who were just drafted might still be playing in the NCAA tournament and unavailable for the start of the PLL season. And it’s not just players, but some veteran PLL players are college coaches, and they’d be unavailable in that scenario as well. And some players who play in the NLL, the indoor pro league, will be playing in that league’s playoffs the first couple weeks, making them unavailable, too.

And the idea of not playing in football season? Well, that’s when ESPN and ABC have time on Sunday afternoons to show PLL games on linear television, since they don’t have NFL games on Sundays. Rabil said last year’s PLL championship, a thriller which the Atlas won, 14-13, saw a 43% increase in ratings over the 2024 game. So the PLL compromised, by starting the season earlier, adding two extra games, and still having their championship game September 20 at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey.

For the Atlas, who are going to be without injured star attackman Jeff Teat, the early start means on Friday they will be missing faceoff man Trevor Baptiste and defensive midfielder Danny Logan, who will be playing for San Diego in the NLL playoffs. They also won’t have their first-round draft pick Alex Ross of Penn State or second-rounder Luke Rhoa of Syracuse, who are both playing in the NCAA tournament.

Third-round pick Nikki DiPonio is available, and coach Mike Pressler, who coaches high school lacrosse in Dallas and was not at practice all week, was expected to fly in for the game and should be available to coach Friday.

“Yeah, we're missing some really talented guys,’’ Atlas goalie Liam Entenmann said. “And it is definitely kind of a very different process versus last year, where . . .  almost every NLL guy was there. The only guys who were missing were the guys that were playing in the [NCAA] Final Four, which is like, one or two guys per team. So now it's definitely more wide open as far as, like, new people, new personnel.

“But the reality is, like no one's going to feel bad for us about that,’’ he said. “No one's going to take it easier on us in games. So we just have to kind of double down and bunker down with the guys that we have.’’

The Atlas can feel fortunate they have Entenmann, the Point Lookout native and Chaminade product, available for the season opener. He is available because the University of Michigan, for whom he is an assistant coach, did not make the tournament.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.