Originally Posted by Anonymous
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

I think the point here is a very good one. Basically, hotbed players are strong due to the abundance of good coaches and strong competition in the hotbeds. And, they are very developed players by the time they get to college. Players like North, Scane, Gilbert, Hall (from Texas, Michigan, Oregon & Texas) come from areas that have so much less access to that level of opportunity. Recruiting - Coaches are actively seeking those players because they hope they will have much more potential to grow. If you look at the Adrenaline All American 2023 watch list (best to the west), there are a good number of west coast players going to strong DI programs.

Look at the men's game. UVA's Lars Tiffany was quoted saying this exact thing about the west coast players and said that he seeks them out. There has already had a tewaarton winner from Oregon (and Charlotte North is from Texas).

Coaches are looking for those kids from outside the hotbed who can play to the level in high school club play, despite not having had as much access to all the east coast opportunities - they will have more potential for growth.