I'm no fan of Crabs, but I disagree. There are few more competitive tournaments than Crabfeast, Young Guns which is McClernan's main Summer event. He also runs the NSLCA with a few of his friendlies, and those tournaments are also first rate.
I do agree that Crabs attend tournaments that are going weaker relative to what they were, but I would account to that being competition from other tournaments and parity meaning more good teams in more places going to multiple tournaments every weekend it seems now. I also think another factor is McClernan is not liked by many others in the sport who had sand kicked in their faces for years. If there are two competing first rate tournaments, more better clubs are going to steer away from the Crabs one. It is already happening in the high school ages. The same weekend as the NSLCA Cup there was an Adrenaline tournament and nobody can argue where the best teams went. They went to the Adrenaline one.
There is a reason this club doesn't enter a lot of out of state tournaments - they don't follow US Lacrosse rules regarding age eligibility. They had a 13 year old play for their 2020 team this weekend! Embarrassing that the organization would allow that at their own tournament.
I don't disagree with the MD reclassified point. The Crabs owner makes his living now putting on tournaments on the for profit side, and makes those tournaments more attractive by putting his elite Crabs teams in them. There is also a reason why the other elite teams in MD or DC areas don't go to out of state tournaments. The best ones are here. Who wants to sign up to go to Colorado and play in lesser tournaments at a great expense. With parity in the sport, good programs will get the memo that it is very lucrative to run tournaments. Adrenaline sure got that memo and read it. Their WCS teams no longer go to Crabs tournaments and don't seem to need to anymore.
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