The [lacrosse]'s Tournament is fine if you are looking/can afford a family vacation in FL. Both like Vail, most of the teams are dreadful.
And any tournament that has rising sophomores playing U15 is pitiful.
Dicks is great in theory....you take the winners from all the top regional tournaments and have them play in a national playoff. Unfortunately many of the regional tournaments do not have the top teams in that region, so a lot of B level teams qualify and get blown out by the 1 or 2 AA teams that do decide to pay the money to travel to Florida.
This is true but not as bad as it sounds. You go from AA+ all the way down to B. So there will be plenty of blowouts, but you will also inevitably play teams near your own level.
For example, in the U13 division (won by Madlax), other than the local team (kudos to them for playing), all of the bottom seeds from day 1 had at least one victory and one or two very close losses. Same in the U11 division. And there were a lot of 1 goal games among some of the top seeds in all the divisions.
And how great is it to play teams from all over North America that you would never otherwise play?
So, as long as families make the trip with the right expectations (and avoid I-75 N of Tampa and I-95 in SC after 8am) and make sure to get to the beach or pool, it's a great trip and not much more expensive than any other tournament.
PS - My team qualified but I never bothered to tell anyone. Who's going to spend their Winter break going to a lacrosse tournament? Well, a Mom talked me into sending out an email in the Fall and 2 days later I had 17 players committed. I controlled expectations about W-L's and everyone had a good experience. Spent NYE with my feet in the sand. Not a bad deal. All that said, I'm not happy about them moving the age cutoff from 8/1 to 6/1 - I understand why they are doing it but I think 8/1 was the right date.
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