I dont disagree with your opinions, however dont be so fast to judge kids and parents for when and where they decide to commit. Every kid is different and every case is different. Not every kid is going to play at an Ivy/ACC/Patriot/Big10, some kids are talented enough but dont have the grades, some kids have the grades but arent talented enough. My son committed to one of those 2nd tier programs and I can say without any trepidation that it was a great decision because it was absolutely the right FIT for HIM. The coaching staff is awesome, the school has his major and does a good job getting kids jobs with internship opportunities, alumni network, etc and he has a real opportunity to play D1 lacrosse at a high level for four years. The whole point of all of this is get your child into a situation where he can be successful and have a great college experience and play the game he loves and if you accomplish that, I say good for you and best of luck to your son.

Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
We wouldn't have these discussions if early recruiting wasn't in the picture. Summer of their sohpmore year going into junior year is reasonable. Stop blaming the parents. It's the club teams and the division 1 lax coaches feeding the machine.


As a parent and NOT a club/college coach, i can tell you from an fairly unbiased perspective that blaming only the coaches is completely untrue. Many a college coach has had 8th grade kids and their parents show up in the lax office during the school year (i.e. before they are even into the summer before frosh yr) asking to talk to the coach, saying they want to consider committing to XXXX college.

At one of the top D3 programs (top both athletically and academically), last fall a group of 4 8th grade kids and their parents walked into the head coach's office asking about recruiting. Coach said it was all he could do to not tell the parents they were frikkin crazy, but instead nicely told them they didnt really start to evaluate kids until summer before Jr Yr. This was driven 100% by parents, as this school never has any commits until rising Jr summer, and any knowledgeable club coach would know that was the case.

While it is true that the root of much of the ER insanity is the coaches being willing to even consider rising Frosh (even if they are 15-16 yo), to not put some of the blame on the parents is being naive. Not that, given the recruiting landscape right now, the parents arent making rational decisions to pursue the gold ring as a Frosh.........if your kid is a stud (or a summer birthday holdback, and then also reclassed when he transferred to brunswick/Choate/ St. XXXXX), is 5'11+ in 8th grade, can shoot on the run, and has pretty good grades, but not good enough to get into a UMich/UVa/ND/JHU on grades alone, then maybe its not crazy. Why not spend 8 weekends during the summer-before and fall-of his Frosh yr to see if you can get him a free, semi-binding option to attend a great school like UMich/UVa/ND/JHU (that he probably wouldn't ever get to sniff at otherwise) simply because he can beat a bunch of year-younger middies off a split dodge........As a parent of a HS Sr (non athlete) who has a 3.8 and 32 ACT but is still probably not getting an acceptance from a UMich/UVa/ND/JHU, having a semi-binding option on one of them maybe isnt the worse thing in the world.

Now, the real head scratchers are the early commits to [insert second-tier D1 school of your choice that any student with a 3.0 and 26 ACT can get in to]. I guess if your son's goal in life is to be a D1 lax player, then knock yourself out.....I just hope its not actually just the parent's goal to be able to claim their son is committed to d1, otherwise its going to be a long 4 years for him in [insert crappy small city name here], and a tough few years living at home after college while in the Enterprise training program.