Originally Posted by Anonymous
Not only are the Division 1 colleges looking for top players and not players from B teams but the the majority of players taken by Division 1 are prep or Parochial school kids. Public School kids are at a big disadvantage even if on a top club. I think a 91 goalie recently made a top D1 team playing on 91 B team so It does happen but it is rare.

So many of you talk about boys who are on B teams at 13, 14 & 15 years old as if they are talentless bums. First off, do you have any idea how much politics takes place in the formation of these A teams? Every A team has at least one coach's kid who shouldn't be on the team, then there are the friends and family of the coaches and directors, or what about when there are a bunch of kids from the same town so that the 'stud' player has someone to carpool with. Are you completely unaware of the parents who slip an extra envelope to the director to get their son onto one of these 'A' teams? Oh yeah, that happens. Go through 91, Express, Igloo and S2S and there are 8-10 boys on each A team roster who barely get into games or strategically play vs lousy teams. I'm not saying there are 8-10 boys on each B team who could take their spots but there are easily 2-3 boys on these B teams who could compete at the A level if they could break through the nonsense. I've seen situations where a 'B' player is a starter on their high school team over an 'A' team player from the same club. I'd take the high school coach's evaluation over the club director's any day in that situation.

Secondly, do you realize that every kid develops at their own pace? Some are early bloomers, some are undersized throughout grade school and then spring up in 9th grade after all these teams have been selected (try breaking onto one of these clubs for the first time in high school). Even professional sports teams misevaluate players and make terrible mistakes, that's how you get busts like Sam Bowie going over MJ just to name the most famous. Bet you haven't heard that Tom Brady was a sixth rounder! Mike Piazza was taken in the last round of the MLB draft. 13 NBA teams passed on Giannis and he's about to win his 2nd consecutive MVP. What makes you think a random club lacrosse coach or director makes all the right decisions?

Finally, with two boys going through the club scene over the last 10 years, I've seen plenty of "A" players come down to fill out their club's B team for a random tournament and do absolutely nothing and I've seen "B" players step up to fill in for an injured "A" player and dominate like they should have been there the whole time. 'A' rankings and 'B' rankings are fluid terms and subject to change. Take a look at the ebb and flow of some of these top LI teams for 2023, one in particular has fallen off significantly b/c they held on too long to a core that was strong in 2016 & 2017 and haven't made the difficult decision of telling some of their 'A' players the truth.