Do LI kids just peak early? Lacrosse is so popular and the kids get so specialized and advanced at a young age that once they are 16 years old and into junior year is that all you get? Just wondering. The best club team I ever saw was the 2017 Turtles and the 2017 Express and Team 91 were good too. A lot of those kids are at Chaminade. Is it just an early peak and this is what it looks like when California or others come to town?
Club ball has ruined the game of lacrosse. Everything is accelerated. Third graders are playing year round. And college coaches are falling over themselves recruiting kids that can't bench press a quarter of their own weight. The multi-sport athletes that coaches say they want is a farce. Kids have to play year round now to just compete. People used to be impressed when a 5th grader could play with both hands. Now if your 5th grader can't, he risks being banished to the "B" team. Hopefully, the very kids we are watching on the field now will have the perspective to not get drawn into this madness with their own children. It's our only hope.
I agree with that. In addition, I think the trend of club becoming more important than high school lacrosse over the last 5-10 yrs due to recruiting has hurt team lacrosse. There is so much emphasis on individual showcases and recruiting showcases that the sport has shifted to more of a me first instead of a team first mentality. Also, the marketing of players and clubs by directors sometimes makes kids out to be better than they are, which in turn creates an expectation that the team will be great. Towns that can balance travel and club so that the kids still play with their high school friends will naturally have a better team mentality. Obviously if you are going to a private that choice is taken away. Before people over react, that was not a knock on privates, just a statement that when you make a choice for a different type of education, the kids will obviously have to play with people from different towns.
If you happen to live in maybe a dozen or so school districts, or go to a couple of the privates, I would agree with you. However, if you happened to buy a house years ago in a good school district, long before you had kids interested in lacrosse, with just an ok lax program your statement doesn't hold too much water. I can tell you with 100% accuracy, my two son's would never have gotten the chance to play in college. They just wouldn't have been exposed to the people who taught them how to play the game. In our town, the PAL program was awful from a teaching standpoint. Some of the Dads did their best but had no clue. The HS Coach has zero understanding of the College game or the recruiting process. Not a bad guy, just isn't in tune with any of it. To a degree he's kind of threatened by the travel kids, of course those are the best kids on the team, top to bottom. Travel/Club didn't ruin the game, the College Coaches and NCAA are ruining the game. It's very simple, no recruiting until the summer between 10th and 11th grade. In today's environment, if your son is not playing in top tournaments and showcases by the summer between 8th and 9th grade he's already behind in the recruiting process. No way you're getting that exposure playing for your JV team in some low level tournament on LI.
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