Originally Posted by Anonymous
The recent success of Garden City is interesting, because it highlights the benefits of both middle school and club teams, and I think pretty much disproves the theory that your "elite" kid shouldn't play for the middle school program. Allow me to elaborate ...

The classes of 2011 and 2012 in Garden City had the benefit of a couple of dads starting their own club team, called the Sharks. I believe this was sometime in 2005 or 2006. The Sharks were loosely affiliated with Gordon Purdie's Checkmate program at Adelphi (which is in GC). At least initially, the boys who played for the Sharks were told they could NOT play for GC Middle School in the spring. This allowed for more boys to play lax for GCMS starting in 7th grade, because many of the "studs" were already playing for the Sharks.

You now had a situation where a LOT of boys were playing a lot of lax for very good coaches. The Sharks were dominant. The stuff of legend really. But the GCMS team was still quite good, and some of those GCMS-only players became very, very good players for the High School.

At some point the Sharks relented and removed the "you can't play for the middle school" rule, and there was some back and forth, especially in the summer. It became a little weird when some of the GC school coaches started appearing as Sharks coaches (at least in print), and I can only assume that this indicates there were no hard feelings on the part of the GC school coaches.

The rest is history. GC being #1 in the country is the direct result of two competing programs, GCMS and the Sharks, producing a lot of great lax players, who then combined in High School to create a dominant team, deep with talent.

What remains to be seen is whether this success will continue, since I believe all the original Sharks players have now graduated.

On another note: I don't want to add to the "Syosset lovefest", but they appear to be on the same path -- a strong travel "club" team for boys who live in the town, plus what I assume is a good middle school program, with at least some cooperation among the two groups.

But hey, what do I know!


Not to be a d%&* but the term "stuff of legends" really does not apply to mid school travel team under any circumstances