Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Agree, things will not change if left up to the clubs. It is in the interest of those that cheat and win to continue to cheat and win, especially if there is no ramification on cheating. What is shocking is that there are clubs and coaches that risk their reputations to win a youth lacrosse game/tournament. At end of the day, nobody is living or dying based on this cheating, but it is so easy to clean up and the right thing to do, it just needs to be done. A public forum to out the cheaters should be more than enough to at least scare a few of the cheaters into walking a straighter line, for fear of being outed and ruining their reputations..


This problem is not new. This has been going on for years.
Every year the number of clubs grows. Clubs add 2nd and 3rd teams. Rosters are growing to ridiculous numbers. When my oldest son started playing club there were a fraction of the teams most clubs didn’t have 2 teams in each age group. Rosters were capped at 20. I’m just happy my youngest is almost done.
I do not place all the blame on the club owners. The parents are to blame also. We keep forking over the cash so our kids can get a partial scholarship. We are the insane ones. We have this dream that lacrosse will get our kids into a better school that they would not be able to get into with out playing so parents do everything they can to give their kid an upper hand.
I’ve had four kids go through the clubs (3 boys and 1 girl) from my experience very few kids ended up In better schools. Most not all would have been accepted into the school that they choose. Believe me from experience just about every kid on Norte Dame, Duke, VA, Hopkins. Would have been able to get in to those schools without lacrosse. Does it make it easier for them. Sure did. But they would have made it anyway.

For the kids that are at NLF and similar, yes, they and their parents are in it for scholarship money and/or admission to better schools. But this is really a small fraction of the teams/events making up summer travel lacrosse. There are many more clubs/teams (and lower teams at the very few power clubs) playing at other events, which are far more numerous. All of these kids are playing because: 1) it is fun; 2) many of their friends do it, so a bit of FOMO; 3) parents want them occupied for the summer and don't want to have to pay for a million vacations/shore houses; 4) it is necessary to keep up with the Jones' in order to be good enough to play Varsity at their mediocre, but perfectly fine, HS program.

For this latter group, which again is the large majority of kids playing, the cheating that you speak of is close to non-existent. You don't see the bloated rosters. All kids get plenty of playing time. No one uses guest players. Very few if any holdbacks (and those that exist are non-lacrosse related). Everyone is at the correct grade. Yes, the teams aren't as good as the NLF teams, and the top players here are only going D-3 (absent a few D1s here and there), but this is where your kid can go to in a second if the cheating and nonsense you speak of (the original poster I am referring to) is too much to bear - of which I don't condone by the way. The top brackets at these events (or sometimes just the top "schedule" at a smaller event) have teams that are not far from many of the lower half NLF teams, and unless your kid is a stud at NLF he won't stand out in a "he is too good for this" way.