You are partially correct and partially incorrect. Every competitive sport you mentioned - lacrosse, football, swimming, basketball, etc. - has kids who are getting seen because of the fact that their parents are able to afford recruiting and special training to give their child higher visibility, get them into a top D1 program, and possibly a professional career. There are also many more kids who are better football players, basketball players, swimmers, and likely lacrosse players who will NEVER be seen or recruited because they don't have the means or connections. The only certainly in athletics is that there is ALWAYS SOMEONE BETTER THAN YOU - no matter WHAT sport you play. If you believe anything otherwise, you're a fool. I can GUARANTEE you that if you take a top program D1 middie, he will run CIRCLES athletically around many D1 football players, quicker and faster on and off the field, with much more stamina. To call accomplished lacrosse players "non-athletes" is simply ignorant. Find me a football player or basketball player or swimmer that can get out on the field with Kyle Harrison/Paul Rabil/Greg Gurenlian/you fill in the blank and even run with them the whole game, let alone have the hand/eye quickness and coordination to pass, catch, and shoot a ball at 90 miles an hour with guys hammering you with sticks - there isn't one. Conversely, I'm betting that those guys could get out on the football field, basketball court, or in the pool and ball and swim with the best of them. They aren't athletes? You're absolutely insane. [/quote]

Well, you're way off there. Elite basketball players don't pay for a thing down to their shoes if they are in the top groups and are going to the combine camps. And if they go to those things and can't hang on, the club coach and parent can't just sign them up or appoint them again -- they get dropped. Soccer is like that too. Swimming, well, there you are totally off. Our daughter swims for Nations Capital in the same training group pool as Katie Ledecky. Not in the same lane mind you. Swimming costs $1000-$1500 a year in club dues and yes there are expenses to go to nationals. The main difference between swimming and lacrosse is the #3 or #6 ranked lacrosse recruit is just an assigned rating. The #3 swimmer or the #6 swimmer is exactly that according to her times. You can't phony it up and get recruited by UVA in swimming: you have to be national or world class and to do that you have to go swim with sharks at nationals and make at least the top 16 semi finals competing against current collegiate athletes and post grad Olympians. Do you realize how insanely accomplished you'd need to be against more than a million kids in your grade, including internationals, to get recruited to Texas or Georgia or UVA to swim? It is so hard that the comparible would be one Baltimore Crab gets recruited to Hopkins every third year. That is how big the difference is in being good enough in lacrosse versus being good enough in a real deep diverse and hugely populated sport with zillions of great athletes.

Try telling me Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky are not two of the 20 greatest athletes of all time, not just swimming, all sports all time. To compare what Paul Rabil did in lacrosse (one NCAA championship, a couple MLL ones, some MVPs) to what Phelps or Ledecky have done and you'd look like a total ignorant fool.

I think your notion that some D1 football players couldn't drop Kyle Harrison or Paul Rabil is a bit silly too. Those are two great lacrosse athletes, and a better way of putting your analogy is if you put Harrison and Rabil out there on UMD's practice field in football with the linebackers, MAYBE they'd hold on and hold together. Take any 10 random lacrosse players on UMD's lacrosse team today and do the same, put them on the UMD football practice field, I rather doubt you'd see more than 2 or 3 who didn't look ridiculously outclassed right away.