The haters can hate (hate, hate, hate) all they want, but there’s no question that it’s hard to shake the sport’s best zones.

James Madison women’s lacrosse coach Shelley Klaes has heard the complaints about zone defense.

It lets teams skirt fundamentals, hides flaws and overprotects goalies.

Good teams don’t use it.

It’s not as good as 1v1 or fun to watch on TV.

Klaes response to all that is short and swift.

“We're trying to find a way to win a game, and for me, that's fun, yeah?” Klaes said. The “yeah?” is not a real question. For good measure, she added, “It's not about the observer.”

Wasn’t it fun to watch James Madison — then of the CAA — upend women’s lacrosse in 2018, beating blue bloods UNC and Boston College — then and still of the ACC — on its way to an NCAA title?

That’s not a real question, either.

The Dukes made confetti angels on the campus of Stony Brook University on Long Island. It was fitting for many reasons, and not just because of the large contingent of Long Island players on every final four team’s roster. Or that Klaes had coached at nearby Hofstra and saw local high school teams running zones.

No, it was also fitting because Stony Brook has implemented one of the sport’s most prolific zone defenses since Joe Spallina took the helm in 2012. The backer the Seawolves employ also traces its roots to Long Island high school lacrosse — Spallina used it in his first season at Rocky Point during a time when it wasn’t the staple it became when Klaes began taking notes.

“My first year, I couldn’t understand how every team let players stand behind the goal and just pass and feed,” Spallina said. “We wanted to come up with something that was a little funky, and a straight-up backer zone is something that comes from the men’s game.”

Late, legendary NYIT men’s lacrosse coach Jack Kaley popularized the backer. He took the 3-3 zone and added a floating defender tasked with sliding. Opposing offenses were confused, especially since zone defense wasn’t standard then.

“It was something where teams struggled to identify what it was, how it was, the principles,” Spallina said.

Few were confused by Rocky Point’s 87-9 record and three-straight Suffolk County crowns under Spallina, who departed for Adelphi ahead of the 2008 season. He had every intention of staying in the zone when he took the job but was warned the system wouldn’t work at the college level.

Wrong.

Adelphi went 73-2 and finished in the top five in scoring defense in each of Spallina’s four seasons. The Panthers never averaged more than seven goals allowed per game in a single season. They yielded just 4.78 goals per game (the fewest in the country) in 2009 en route to the first of three straight NCAA Division II titles.

Naturally, Spallina brought it — and defensive coordinator Caitlin Defliese, who has gone on to help Syracuse run a zone — to Stony Brook. Naturally, he was told it wouldn’t work.

Wrong again.

Stony Brook is one program Klaes points to when discussing some of the best zones in recent years. Klaes’ zone introduction came while watching household names in a different sport. Her father played basketball in college, and her version of appointment TV as a 1980s kid was Celtics-Lakers games.

“Basketball put my eyes on a lot of different systems,” Klaes said. “You can do so much with perimeter and interior systems in lacrosse — shells, even face guards.”

She hired Emily Boissonneault, who had experience playing in zones with Canadian national teams, in 2015. That same year, the NCAA introduced a 90-second shot clock. (Klaes has stuck with defensive coordinators with ties to Canada. Current JMU assistant Kateri Linville coached in the Canadian system.)

“When there was no clock, it was hard to figure out how to stop a team because they could just possess the ball,” Klaes said. “I felt a zone was a way for us to break up space, and it aligned with our philosophy already. We were about being one team.”

Like a shot clock-less game, the zone has detractors who say it’s not entertaining. But for Klaes, the “not fun” piece is part of the plan.

“Zones are frustrating,” Klaes said. “It makes a scoring play tough. It takes the control away from the offense. It forces high-level skill, footwork, decision-making and composure. You take an elite player, and they have to level up again because all of the muscle memory that they have in their reps on their own over time is broken up. It comes back to coordination, poise, connection and ability within the team.”

And yes, Spallina says, the zone does even the scales between teams with larger budgets and crowded trophy cases who can attract blue chips and those who dig for diamonds in the rough.

“It allows us to level the playing field, and it becomes more of a coaching thing — an X's and O's matter with our programs,” Spallina said. “You have these teams with five-star kids who can run up and down the field for days. The zone is to make the opposing team beat you with seven players, not one player.”

Denver coach Liza Kelly agrees — in fact, she points out that offenses can hide weaker links easily when attacking 1v1 defenses.

“It requires you to play with all seven people, and not hide three or four people,” Kelly said. “If you’re running three middies and one is better defensively, you can hide them offensively against a 1v1 defense. In zone, if not everybody can handle the pressure or has vision, it forces a team to play faster.”

Zones aren’t cookie-cutter defenses. Kelly looked at Stony Brook’s backer zone, but the “hot     pink” zone the Pioneers rode to a final four berth in 2023 is distinct.

“If you watch Stony Brook play, their [backer] follows the ball all the time,” Kelly said. “We’re in more of a roamer zone. Our player isn’t playing the ball unless it’s an ‘Oh God’ situation and everything is falling apart.”

Sometimes, the Pioneers will go into a “sunken” zone with limited pressure throughout the defense, a la USC. Other times, they will run more of a backer. What does it take to assume that centerpiece role of a team defense? Spallina is picky about it.

“It has to be a super high-IQ player,” he said. “She doesn’t have to be the biggest or fastest, but it has to be somebody who exhibits a great understanding of the game and how to read players. Our backer rarely has to actually defend the ball.”

Spallina compares it to a free safety in football. The IQ piece extends to the low defenders, who do need on-ball skills with active sticks, he said. “What we lack in athleticism against some of the top teams, we have to make up in IQ, and our players do a really good job of exhibiting that.”

Klaes agrees on IQ and stamina.

The shot clock was an impetus for JMU to lean into a zone, but it shifted the game for Stony Brook, which was already using it as its main system. While many hail the shot clock as an offensive weapon, Spallina said it’s helped the defense, which knows when a team will attack.

“There’s the illusion of the zone that things are open, and when the passes are made, our backer is breaking to pick the ball off. That’s where there’s some fool’s gold — things look enticing, and when they take it, we’re waiting there," he said. "There’s rat poison all over the zone, and if they eat it, they’re in trouble.”

Zone defenders also must be mindful to stay out of trouble. The zone can make it easier to get called for shooting space, a rule unique to the women’s game designed to give attackers reasonable lanes to shoot.

“You have to be able to read the situation,” Kelly said. “Are you stuck inside? Do you stay inside with the attacker, or do you get out and work on your timing? Eyes on the ball is a big one for me. If you’re watching the ball and know where it’s going, you should be able to read that.”

As for the claim that zones hide bad goalies, it’s hard to hide from a free position shot when it’s the goalie and offensive player one-on-one. And those opportunities are easier to come by if a team is getting whistled for shooting space more frequently.

“Your goalie has to understand where the shot is coming from and be able to make eight-meter saves, because you tend to get called for more [fouls],” Kelly said. “A goalie can also be part of the defense, go for interceptions, talk and create plays. But there’s also a time when you need to sit tight and wait to make a save.”

For his part, Spallina concedes goalies can do some considerable waiting in the backer system.

“It’s hard to play goalie in our zone — I will say that,” he said. “We're a team that averages letting up right now about 17 shots a game, which is low. Our goalies don’t see a ton of shots, and the shots they do see are almost always contested. So that’s where it can be challenging sometimes for a goalie.”

Those shots typically come from right on top of the goalie, too. And Spallina said that’s part of why — though he drew inspiration from a men’s coach for a girls’ and women’s zone defense — zones are far more common in the women’s game.

“Men have more stretch shooters now, guys that can shoot it from 15 to 17 yards out with power velocity,” Spallina said. “It’s hard to be in the zone as you get stretched out. On the women’s side, things are more compact and in smaller areas.”

In the end, people can question the zone all they want, and there are certainly nuances even among the coaches that run it. That’s part of the fun. But if it works, it works — and the zone has undoubtedly worked for some annual dark horses (and one national champion).

“Every coach is different in how they teach it,” Kelly said. “But my thing is, if you understand why you did something, even if I don’t agree with it on the sideline, it’s the right play. As long as you can justify it, then job well done, yeah?"

Kelly’s not asking, either.