Originally Posted by Anonymous
Unless you play for a top tier nationally recognized high school program, club is pretty important. While I would imagine that there are exceptions, you would be hard pressed to find a non-club player being recruited from a high school that is not know to have a strong lacrosse program. I agree that in some respects the ability of a club to get a kid recruited can be somewhat over-hyped, no matter what club it is, your kid still has to stand out on their own. Once September 1 of junior year comes around, you have a much better perspective on how the process works, and how hard it is to get recruited.

Totally on point.....everyone should try to grasp this....the recruiting process stinks....the top 5 kids on every team goes off the board fast to the "bigger named schools." The directors help a little bit for the first 5 big names but its minimal because those are the kids the college coaches were asking the directors about in July when they couldn't talk to your kid...these are the big splash kids who your club will promote right away and throw on their websites about the signings.....then you start to realize that even though your a really good player you didn't make the big splash and your in the second and third tiers and not getting even a quarter of a scholarship...then you start looking at the lesser named schools and hopefully you were seen in the summer by them.....do your homework people....identify a few schools you think you can play at (not freshman or even sophomore year) and reach out to the coaches in May and June and tell them where your going to be this summer so they can watch you....just about every club in NJ does two of the big recruiting tourneys whether its the NAL, NLF, Naptown, Crabfeast or whatever else.

The NJ 2023's are in the second and third tier now and its difficult....as the dude said in the posts before 2023 NJ is a little lacking in overall depth....2024's have a pretty large group of D1 prospects and the 2025's look to be even bigger as they are developing into a sizeable class as well....enjoy the ride because it stinks in your recruiting year!!!!!!!! Only a handful of kids on your team will be committed early...look at the non big named colleges....they are all comparable now with parity at the college level.[/quote]

2023s are not lacking in depth, they just aren't consolidated on 1 or 2 teams like the younger classes. Until you are in the thick of your kids recruiting year, you simply have no real perspective. 2023's are through the first wave of early commitments, more will follow, it is a very long process. Also, keep in mind that there are kids that have not shown interest in some of the D1 schools because of the school being subpar academically, so their recruiting process may take longer.