All the time they are discussions about high school players that either never pan out, or are the superstars they were expected to be. No one ever mentions the exponentially greater level of training, lifting, practice speed, film, and general level of “ professionalism” that goes along with college lacrosse! Kids from hotbed areas have had more training during ms and hs, yes, but those kids enter college with , in general, little what I call “spare capacity”. Soo maybe coaches like Spallina has a knack for spotting the girls who, maybe their parents didn’t throw down money for every single exposure opportunity, every chance to be set by IL contributors, for funding and grabbing the real diamonds in the rough. My guess is Amonte-Hiller has that same knack. North, Scane, Gilbert, Hall and a few others all started relatively late (6th grade I think I read) never looked to see which of them had over of those storybook high school careers, but someone did their homework, chose not to after the low hanging fruit, and identified those with the biggest perceived room to grow at the college level. With the likes of IL and USAlax citing hs “superstars “ in the hotbeds, the real stars might be missed, and the soo called experts evaluations might more often than not be needed to be taken with a grain of salt. Soo I think part of my point, kinda buried a little, is that how the girls do in college is every bit of if not more a reflection of how they adapted to the college level and intensity of training, not soo much what they speed up with on the first day of college practice
Too much gibberish to respond to, Spallina would love to get more highly ranked players but cannot simply because going to SBU which is essentially a commuter school is not regarded as good a college experience by many. Take the scrimmage that they just played in the last 2 years UVA has brought in 7 UA senior AA to 1 for SBU so yes Spallina does more with players that were not as highly recruited. It is not that he can see their future potential over other coaches but its more that those players did not have as many options so that is who he can recruit to go there. Spallina seems to have the ability to get these players to reach their potential while many other coaches dont. Maybe its the illegal amount of hours that his teams practice ,who knows.
Agree, way to much gibberish...
To be clear, just because a player chooses to attend SBU does not mean that the player was not identified as strong players or recruited by other college programs. For many, cost of attendance is a major factor and for many LI kids SBU can be significantly more affordable than many other schools. Just like Maryland, I'm sure many of the Maryland kids would have loved to go to UNC, Virginia, Stanford, Florida, Penn State, USC, Penn, Princeton, Northwestern, Notre Dame etc... but at what cost?
This notion that the SBU players were not recognized by other programs is not true. Just about all of the high performing players for SBU in the past several years were very well known HS players. For many, it's about the $$$ and the kids happiness.
I seem to recall a post on here not long ago that pointed out that Stony Brook had more players the made the Long Island Underclass Under Armour team than any other college program. Players who earn a spot on the LI Under Armour Underclass teams are not diamond in the rough, they are very well known.
There has been a consistent narrative over the years that Pumps up JS as the best coach in college lacrosse (yes, he is an excellent coach). That narrative has also consistently downplayed the actual ability of the Stony Brook Players.
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