US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums NORTHEAST LACROSSE BOTC MAIN FORUM (LI, CT, WC) Long Island Express Lacrosse

fl$ tryouts also done. If you didn't make orange you are screwed.

were there many boys at fl$ tryouts since they were held so late in the season

No the sign of the times is with the early recruiting players, committing early and not going to play all summer when they can relax! Glad my son is lucky enough to be done! Bit also glad playing for Express the past few summers got him the looks he needed!!!!

Truth is there are now so many non-club opportunities to be seen that what club you play for is becoming irrelevant. Also lots of college coaches have told us they don't trust the club coach opinions because of the money connection and the marketing of the recruits that the clubs put on the websites. They trust the school coaches much more. My son was recruited by going to a prospect day that we found ourselves and the club had nothing to do with him getting an offer. In fact they didn't even call the club. Film and his school coach were the only other backup he needed. We saved a boatload not doing the high profile club thing. So, save your money.

Congrats! Let me guess your son was or is on Orange. Not going to knock Express and their results. Just now there are a lot of options and people have choices which will hurt Express in the future. People can only take being treated like crap only so much.

Congratulations to your son! Just a thought-maybe your son got the look due to the years of training with Express. Maybe he would not have been quite the lacrosse player had he not been trained by them. My son is much younger and we are not in that process yet. However, my experience with Express has been very positive. My son needed the proper training so he could break bad habits that the town team father coaches didn't realize they were instilling to no fault of their own. They were doing the best they could, but just didn't know any better. As for the high school coach being an advocate for his players, that truly depends on the coach. The high school my son will go to, the coach has his select favorites and advocates for only a handful. Luckily, the boys that did play club got scholarships from D1 schools because of their club teams and with zero help from a coach that didn't see their talent. Good luck to your son.

My son was not an orange player,but he did get great training and a lot of help with getting invites to the right recruiting camps from the Express coaches. His High School coach is a nice guy,but was not a big help when it came to the recruiting camp invites.My son is going to be playing at a D1 school.There are a lot of opportunities for a lot of different level players.As far as the prior posters comments,you cant make everyone happy all the time.....that could be said for every single club and every single school coach and team. One persons good or great experience could be anothers bad one.So find what works for your family and child and go with it.Our was Express and lucky for us it worked out. Good Luck to all the student athletes that want to play.

Amen! Find what works for your kid. Club lax is a business now. None are a guaranteed perfect fit for all. If not happy with one try another one. There are numerous options avaiable now

Not express - niche program. Bottom line if your kid can't play it doesn't matter what club he is with and if he can play it also doesn't matter what club he's with.

SOOOOO disagree In my vast experience this is not true. I have seen great players get overlooked, fall through the recruiting cracks,or on the other side get a spot for a camp invite...because of A Politics B Who Dad knows C Who club/school coach knows D How much is in the family bank account E Who in the family played or plays lax and they think the sibling is just as talented and too many other reasons to list.

Even with the benefit of A throurgh E on your list, none of it matters to a college coach (who's job is on the line) if your kid is not an athletic thoroughbred or Einstein. I've spoken to no less than 5 or 6 college coaches both in DII and DI over the past month or so and they are all exhausted by the club scene - they want to see your kid perform in their high school program to see how he plays a specific role within a system, takes direction and takes pride in his school uniform. All of those things are a much better gauge of how he will transition to a college coache's system then watching johnny play Random Team A vs Random Team B for 40 min. The high school scene is not dead yet and if anything the club scene is killing itself.

Name the universities or colleges involved in your poll and BOTC will call them to specifically discuss this issue. You are pushing a self-serving bias in this post. College coaches actually do NOT want to scout High School Varsity matches for two specific reasons.

[1] High school matches take place one at a time - meaning one game, one venue, two teams. It is an ineffective use of their recruiting budget to schedule travel accordingly.

[2] High school competitions are very erratic in terms of competition level. College coaches are looking for matches played as close as possible to the college game's speed and physicality - the only place to find those types of situations are at showcases, typically on a regional level.

Again, post the names of the colleges and we will validate this information for all of the BOTC readers.

I understand your points but no offense - I'm not in a position to volunteer a coach's time to speak with you. Best way is for you to reach out to the college coaches yourself - pick 5 or 6 randomly.

BOTC Reader's Digest Version : The story posted by our anonymous champion of "College Coaching needs from High School Varsity Programs" was not, is not, and will never be true.

Sage,
100% spot on.
If the poster was correct, then no college recruiters would even show up at the showcases. Actually, the contrary is true, the showcases and clubs are becoming more important than the HS influence.

Sage - we know the clubs butter your bread with advertising money but please try to stay unbiased on this. By the way, during your due diligence please ask them about the issue of seeing individual kids versus teams during the summer circuit. I've been told that they usually are looking at individual players that they've identified ahead of time and care less about the team they are on. It's perfectly fine to go to recruiting tournaments as a "free agent". It'll be interesting if you hear the same.

Nice try. Rule Number One : No individual, no company, no organization, no tournament, no camp, no clinic - can "buy" BOTC's opinion. We are serious about distributing truthful and clear college information for parents and student-athletes both here on BOTC and on our parallel BOTN web site.

You are correct here about one point : All recruitment is done on an individual player level. Teams are not recruited - players are recruited. This topic has been exhaustively discussed on BOTC and BOTN's College Forum. College coaches want to deal with student-athletes that have expressed interest in the institution and lacrosse program which is why this all comes down to individuals and not teams.

Now, what were those university names again that were part of your survey?

Economics are a funny thing - markets do not exist where they are not needed. Showcases would not be growing by leaps and bounds if there was not a demand for the services that they provide.

Really? C'mon Sage - thats just a cheap shot way of trying to discredit the discussion and not a reasonable request to volunteer a college coach's time to discuss this - they are full-on on crushed for time recruiting and running their programs 24x7 and could care less about our discussion here. You need to do your own due diligence just as we are doing for our sons. I'm only offering pieces of my due diligence as informational. My son plays on a club so I am not trying to trash the club scene on purpose - that would be silly since I'm paying damn good money for the club which I believe fills a void with value around the high school season. But, I thought it would be interesting to share elements of my conversations as well as conversations my son has had as recently as this past weekend. If others have heard differently, please share! And please, no specific college coach names necessary! We're just sharing info here that I hope is truthfully what people are hearing direclty from college coaches. I sense they are fatigued, maybe jeaolous of the club money and also leary of the "pay for play" and marketing benefits of success stories that clubs have with potential recruits.

However, the basis of our discussion was that these same overworked and overloaded coaches have plenty of time to look at a single candidate at a High School Varsity match? If we are talking about a County, Long Island, or State finals, we can see the point for local institutions, however that does not play well regionally.

Having placed more than three dozen players in NCAA Division I, Division II, and Division III athletics, our due-diligence has been more than completed.

Understood.

The void that club lacrosse fills is the entire recruiting cycle. If you think we have it wrong, take the club money, bank it for a nice first year self-funded scholarship, and see how the recruitment scene goes for your son.

The point is that BOTC cannot share a single example where a College Coach would opt to recruit a player from a High School Varsity match over a collegiate showcase.

Why? These folks are in the public eye and handling recruitment. If the landscape is tilted as you assert, better to let the community know which institutions are favoring High School over Club ball.

BOTC is in touch with all of the local college programs and many beyond - chances are, we are have spoken with most of the coaches that you would cite.

The club marketing does not mean all that much when you consider that the college coach is recruiting the player, not the team.

"I've spoken to no less than 5 or 6 college coaches both in DII and DI over the past month or so and they are all exhausted by the club scene - they want to see your kid perform in their high school program to see how he plays a specific role within a system, takes direction and takes pride in his school uniform."

I have heard this also from a prominent div I program. Usually that's the coaches way of communicating to parents that your son is not on their radar, has not impressed them to date, and a way of saying they will check back this spring one last time but will probably pass on him.

OUCH!

Just read the LI Express website and take a look at all the names of the student athletes that are playing college lacrosse at Div 1,2,3 schools.You can see the success rate that the club program has had in helping get players to the program that is best suited for that individual. Lots and lots of great players over many years.

Yes - a nice list of recruited players. But is it the club or the kid's ability that gets him recruited? I say the kid's ability 100%.

A miracle then that anybody was ever recruited before any of these clubs were formed.

Give the credit to the kids for making this happen. The great majority on this list would have been recruited no matter what club or school they played for.

Let's put it in words. If these clubs were about really developing players they would start up teams in 4th or 5th grade by holding a tryout and then keep that team together till 12th with no cuts. You would need to fill holes due to loss of players, loss of interest etc.This would be about player development. Why should they do that when they can hold a tryout every year and take new players that are better than the ones they have. It's a business. It's about bragging rights and getting more players to pay to play. Many of the players on the Express college list would have played in college regardless if they played for Express or any other program. Yes Express has put together a format to maximize player development and exposure but in the end its the player not the club the college coach is recruiting.

When it comes to recruiting its silly to say a coach wouldn't want to go to a combine and see 200 players that could possibly play college ball in one weekend but travel to some high school game where there could be 2 or 3 possible college players. So they would need to travel to 65 high school games to accomplish the same thing as going to one combine.

Interesting concept but it does not work, kids develop at different rates and you want your kid to play on a team that gives him the greatest chance to succeed. Staying with kids that might have been great in 4th grade but not in 7th will not help your kid develop or help the team stay competitive. The Raiders tried what you are recommending and they were never "about the money" and they failed to stay together because everybody was welcome back, the better kids left. I think the 2013 Raiders team that broke up around 8th grade had about 15 kids that are now committed D1 and you can see a bunch of those names on Expresses web site, when they were the Raiders they didn't have tryouts and didn't cut kids and eventually folded and it is a shame because they were great. the 2016 and 2018 Raiders hooked up with 91 so they could get stronger and stay competitive knowing that they could not stay competitive as independents.

We also have no idea how long those kids on the Express college list played for Express.

Express might be like the Alabama Crimson Tide, claiming national championships awarded by the local high school paper. Did those kids play one game for Express, or were they involved for 3 years. No way to tell!

Heck, my kid made an Express team, we went to one meeting, and never returned. If he makes it on a college team, would the Express list him too?

I was just using that format as an example if it were about player development not a business. We all know its a business for those who run the clubs. It will never be about loyalty or the kids.

You need to remember a lot of these kids from express play for St Anthonys or Cahaminade so they have a big talent pool to start with. For the most part they will only take the best kids available to fill there team. They will bypass many of St Anthony and Chaminade kids to put great players on the orange team. If express had only Catholic school kids coaches would not watch these kids they have the best of both worlds

I agree but loyalty works both ways, in these "loyal" organizations where they tried the no tryout route, the better players tryout for the best teams and if they make it they jump ship while the rest of the players who don't have options stay. eventually making them a weaker team - the players and the families have the same loyalty as the big clubs, none.

The first night of the 2015 express tryouts were a sham in that a bunch of the orange players didn't even bother to show up (some did however). Yet very few changes to the team. There were kids who played their hearts out both nights with no realistic chance of making it. Yet others don't have to pick up a stick. Great message - thanks very much for your donation sucker.

Yes kids are forced to tryout for multiple teams because club teams are always looking for the next big thing and have created so much uncertainty amongst players and family kids need to keep their options open. Rather than develop a player the clubs just look for a player better than the one they have. Nothing upfront just backroom scheming. Many decisions are made who they will replace or not replace before tryouts even occur.

Sort of resembles reality in our society. Didn't we just go through this on Nov 6th and it was revealed that several districts in this country had 110%+ turnouts all leaning to one side...go figure!

Sort of resembles reality in our society. Didn't we just go through this on Nov 6th and it was revealed that several districts in this country had 110%+ turnouts all leaning to one side...go figure! [/quote]

Now this is a whole different debate!!! Odd how that happened and nobody wants to really talk about it.

Is it $2400 for the varsity players ?

They should state up front - "Your son is not trying out for the Orange team - he is trying out for placement on either the Blue or whatever we are calling the 3rd team. Thanks for the Hundy."

This country should go to the popular vote election system. In New [lacrosse] for instance if I vote Republican then basically my vote doesn't count.

The direction that the country's heading it's not going to matter! Low-information voters appear to now out number the rest of us...