Originally Posted by Anonymous
If the response to "Here's the only real data-driven difference in athletics experience that ML and Hawks dads are looking at" (D1 recruiting success) leads you to call the poster drunk, LOL the post maybe hit close to home. That post brings up some interesting and booooooooo boring concepts like that maybe ML and Hawks kids don't have more fun at HS, don't have happier marriages, and don't make more money than some random kid playing at Greene Turtle or FCA AAA.

ML and Hawks are fantastic destinations for 45-50 of the country's top athletes. But it's a good straw man type argument that the rest of the 200? kids playing HoCo AA, AAA and Elite ball have a decent chance of living out those dreams too at a smaller stadium or a new program. Most of those kids parents can pick up a big chunk of college costs anyway, because it's MD lax parents.

Describing that post as "data-driven" is a massive stretch; it was almost entirely anecdotal. If the point was that it's not crazy for lax dads to be arguing on this forum because being on a top team guarantees elite college admission, then at a minimum the author would need to figure out how many kids playing for elite teams when they're 11 are still on those teams when they're 18. From what I've seen, the rosters turn over significantly as the kids age.

The author also notably name-dropped Harvard. Okay, but Hawks post 7 years of commits online an in that time they have sent more players to, for example, Furman (3) than all Ivy League schools combined (2). MadLax seems to do much better on that measure, but that suggests that, all else equal, when it comes to getting into super-elite colleges growing up in McLean with parents who can send you to elite prep schools may matter more than lacrosse.

Look, this isn't to criticize Hawks or MadLax -- they're both great programs and should be proud of their success (or Furman, which I'm sure is a great option for lots of kids, despite the OP disparaging small schools) -- but if your kid's 6th grade sports team placement, let alone your propensity to talk bout it on message boards, is a big part of your college admissions planning, well, I hope you have a plan B.