MLE and youthlaxchampionship.com is excited to announce our partial field for the 2022 National Championship. Committed teams include: LI Express, Annapolis Hawks, Team Carolina, Igloo, Mad Lax, Diamondbacks, BBL Elite, Team 91 Maryland, Team 91 Long Island, Team Superstar (Westchester, NY) Triad Elite (NC) CT Chargers, Bethesda LC, and LI Outlaws 2022.
Competition for WSYL.
I think WSYL in particular, though, misses one thing about the Little League World Series that makes it so great. In the LLWS, teams are all star teams that come out of town leagues. So it would be like if all these lacrosse kids still played rec in their little home leagues and came together as all star teams after their regular season. That feels more organic, like there's more local interest, and more joy in the kids.
Club lacrosse teams are basically year-round entities. Yeah, the level of play might be better than assembling basically the best of a town league's rec players, but it feels a little manufactured.
Doesn't seem like this new tournament is going to be any different. But it will be on the east coast, and there are probably teams that wouldn't have traveled to Denver that will play in this tournament. And there's the added benefit of not having to break up a team that played together the rest of the year because of holdbacks. So as far as tournament "quality" this might be better than WSYL.
As far as the committed teams, though, RR and Bethesda didn't even finish in the top half of their spring league last year. Do you really think they're two of the sixteen best teams in the country? They said they're only taking 16, and they've already got 15. So there's only one team out there that's at least as good as those two that hasn't applied yet?
I guess as I look more closely, their WWW site says registration closed 12/1. But there's still an application link, so I'd bet they'd still take teams. If two or three teams come along that are better than those two, are they now locked in to taking them?
