US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Greater Howard Club Lacrosse Conference (HoCo)

Anyone see the USClubLax Rankings? Surprising the HoCo teams did so poorly this summer at the top events. I've never even heard of some of these clubs. No DC Express, Hawks, or T91 MD. Just Crabs, Madlax, FCA, and Roughriders.

"These rankings are based off the 2018 results at several top tournaments throughout the country (NLF Club National Championship, Naptown National Challenge, Crab Feast And, The NLF Main Event). This ranking looks at all age levels within a program. Each age level results are combined to create a program wide win percentage. Teams are given a small deduction if a team is not entered in all age groups. Than a “level of competition” adjustment is made (wins in lower brackets do not amount to as much as a win in the highest bracket). Additionally, a small boost is given to a club if they win an age group. This overall win percentage is program wide. Meaning if a program fields multiple teams in each age group we will take the win percentage from all teams entered."

1. Team 91
2. Express Lacrosse
3. LB3 Thunder
4. Primetime Lacrosse
5. Crabs Lacrosse
6. Leading Edge
7. Sweet Lax
8. Eclipse
9. Laxachusetts
10. Big 4 HHH
11. Legends Lacrosse
12. NJLC
13. N.E. Twisters
14. Mad Lax
15. Mesa Lacrosse
16. N.H. Tomahawks
17. FCA
18. Top Gun Fighting Clams
19. West Coast Starz
20. Denver Elite
21. True National
22. Roughriders
23. Team Carolina
24. Boneyard Lacrosse
​25. The Lacrosse School

HOCO the Howard County league that started all the mess with holdbacks in MD with their grade based leagues. All Howard County leagues are age based except lacrosse.

Look at the people who run it..All tied to MIAA schools with Holdback children

Howard County Recreation should have a special place in the Hall of Shame of Youth Sports

No Hawks? Laughable.

Apparently you didn't read what the purpose of these "rankings" are. Pasted below:
"Last week, US Lacrosse announced the launch of pilot qualification criteria and an associated website for our 2018 US Lacrosse Nationals event. Understandably, the announcement generated a great amount of discussion on social media because the information released was poorly-worded and misleading.

In fact, US Lacrosse never intended to attempt to identify the best club teams in the country, and the description of the criteria as “ranking” system was an unfortunate mistake. The pilot criteria will be used as a way for teams that participate in US Lacrosse-sanctioned qualifiers to be selected to attend the US Lacrosse Nationals event."

Yawn

Apparently, you didn’t catch that these aren’t US Lacrosse rankings. These are rankings by a site calling themselves usclublax.

Sounds like a reputable site. Look at the url. Says NLF rankings in it. Could that be why all the NLF clubs are ranked so high? Hmmm

Yawn , another holdback apologist who cant compete without being a year older than other children

How much is the entry fee for HOCO?

I think the guys running USClubLax are too ignorant to realize that T91 North, T91 MD, DC Express, etc. are separate clubs from the licensing company they pay money to.

Why would you include DCE? They literally have one good team.

No Evergreen no Cav’s even more laughable

The Hoco league plays NCAA rules with a few modifications for youngest grades. Anyone know whether they plan to implement shot clock? Seems far fetched for youth refs to manage. And I don't think it's needed in youth game

HoCo has paid score keepers/clock operators and working scoreboards. Minus having a clock on both ends of the field, it doesn't seem to be that much of a hurdle to overcome. The ref simply signals a reset of the shot clock on change of possessions or an offensive reset and the kid working the clock hits the button.

USClubLax has another set of rankings. They have the mid-atlantic rankings out:
1) Crabs
2) Leading Edge
3) Big 4 HHH
4) Mesa
5) Madlax
6) FCA
7) Roughriders
8) Hawks
9) Southshore
10) DC Express / BLC
11) NJLC
12) Dukes
13) Brotherly Love
14) Tri-State
15) HLC
16) Rock
17) BBL
18) Team 11
19) Lax Factory (3d MD)
20) Steps

Here is their note:" Our Mid-Atlantic Regional Rankings! THIS IS NOT OPINION BASED, ALL PERFORMANCE. Here is how we arrived at our rankings: These rankings are based off the 2018 results of 16 of the top tournaments throughout the country. This ranking looks at all age levels within a program. Each age level results are combined to create a program wide win percentage. Teams are given a small deduction if a team is not entered in all age groups. Than a “level of competition” adjustment is made (wins in lower brackets do not amount to as much as a win in the highest bracket). Additionally, a small boost is given to a club if they win an age group. This overall win percentage is program wide. Meaning if a program fields multiple teams in each age group we will take the win percentage from all teams entered"

I have a feeling that clubs with B teams are penalized for having worse records averaged in with their A teams' performance.

Do the Crabs have B teams?

Yes, the B teams are called VLC.

What benefit would a shot clock bring to youth games?

Players/coaches need to be able to see the shot clock counting down.

The Virginia teams are really out of state teams and would most likely not be factored into the ranking if Crabs are ranked number one. Many B teams are made to get extra money out of parents who have kids who do not make the primary team in hopes they will one day get bumped up AKA money grabs. Crabs players do not go to VLC and vice versa. T91 and DCE are not B teams for the LI team? The list is a joke anyway if Hawks are 8 look at HOCO results how many Crabs teams won?

Yes, it was a joke. Though talent wise, VLC is a B team when compared to Crabs, especially at youth level.

Shot clock would be a mistake in youth. Would add a complexity to the game that is unwarranted.

As a HoCo parent, I would love to see HoCo clean up the league. There is a simple, easy fix that will keep club owners happy, allow kids some flexibility to play with friends from school, protect the kids from injury, and protect the league from criticism and liability. All HoCo has to do is change one sentence of their bylaws & league rules to mirror what AAU has done for years. AAU knows what it is doing and has struck the perfect grade/age balance and HoCo should learn from AAU's lead.

HoCo's "club" bylaws currently read: The Conference follows a grade based system based on the player's current grade level. Players who are participating in any high-school level program such as a high school freshman, JV-B, junior varsity, or varsity team is not eligible for the 8th grade division.

The only change that needs to be made is: The Conference follows a grade based system based on the player’s current grade level, but in order to play in the 8th grade division the player must not have turned 15 before beginning the 8th grade; to play in the 7th grade division the player must not have turned 14 before beginning the 7th grade; etc. Players who are participating in any high-school level program such as a high school freshman, JV-B, junior varsity, or varsity team is not eligible for the 8th grade division.

As you can see, this tracks the AAU age restrictions found on page 5: http://image.aausports.org/handbooks/boys_basketball/2018_BoysBskHandbook_10-5-2017_V02-GT.pdf.

This simple rule change would allow kids to continue to play with their existing club team, unless they have been held-back more than once. Hopefully we can all agree that with summer birthdays, kids doing pre-K for non-lacrosse reasons, kids repeating grades for academic or admission reasons, there should be some flexibility for kids to play with their current grade, but there really is no reason to allow double-holdbacks to play in a youth league, even if it is grade based. Let's clean up the league and make it a more level, safer playing field for all.

Silly me most 8th graders turn 14 and 7th 13. Keep cheating. Don’t change the rule

What you propose makes sense except HoCo has different divisions based on skills. The biggest offenders of the double holdbacks are the clubs who are well known for this practice. If you are truly concerned, you should go to your club and ask to play in a lower level. There is no shame for wanting to play against equal competition and everyone knows those clubs are the worst practitioners.

So what is your alternative? Is it - any delayed entry kid born before March 1 (approximate HoCo start date) will have to play in the class category above? Are you advocating the country goes back to strict calendar year to start school so all 8th graders could only be a maximum of 14 for the HoCo league? Is it to follow USL rules on participation?

Others have suggested going strictly by age where on a kid's birthday, they age up into the next group automatically. This way a kid will be the youngest and eventually be the oldest on the team.

Then you have to figure out how to get all the clubs and organizations to follow any change in a way that is to their benefit without financial or organizational pain. The clubs don't care because the older kids make their teams better. The colleges don't care because it is saving them the cost of red-shirting and they now have a better recruiting sense because all these holdbacks have matured and there are less surprises when they hit college. The parents don't care because they think they are doing what's best for their kids.

It's been a problem for a long time but the constant disruption on these threads don't move the needle.

I like the idea of a shot clock. There are way too many coaches over-coaching and screaming profanities at kids for taking shots instead of waiting for their best kid to dominate. Implementation would be a challenge. Perhaps use the game clock to be the shot clock and keep the time manually? Or do the scoreboards have a spot for a shot clock already? I think they have a spot for penalties.

The Hoco games already have a scoreboard operator and it would not be much more effort to have them reset the shot clock. Most county leagues could not afford to deal with this, but Howard County could easily.

Except that the scoreboard is only on one end of the field.

All the local box leagues use shot clock. If box refs can handle it, why can't a HoCo ref. It is not harder to manage than advancement counts. Yes, a visible clock at both ends would be nice. But it is not essential. A warning at 10 seconds is usually sufficient. The handheld buzzers work too with buzzer at 10 seconds.

I like the shot clock and get rid of the failure to advance. The shot clock serves the same purpose. The scoreboard on one side only seems to be a relatively minor problem and overcome with a little coaching.

A visible clock at both ends is essential. Just like it is in box. That's why the NCAA rule specifically requires it.

And yes, while box leagues have been able to handle it (mostly), that's because they are all playing in indoor arenas that have the systems built in. That is not the case for HoCo. They would have to buy, install, maintain and man each field with systems. It is not realistic - certainly not for this coming Spring. I doubt very many tournaments will even be able to implement it.

Don't need clock at both ends. If the HoCo games are like the HoCo games I have been to in the past, the parents will be yelling SHOOT and counting down the clock like the world is about to end. Everyone will know how much time is left whether they want to or not.

Does anyone have any insight to the spring schedule as it relates to spring break. I feel we can safely assume that there will be no games Easter weekend which is 4/20-4/2, but what about the weekend before. Are all teams playing on the weekend of 4/13-4/14? and if not how do we get insight into who is playing and who is not?

The dates for spring break are different for school districts vs. private vs. catholic. No games Easter weekend but they definitely will have games all other weekends from 3rd weekend of march to weekend before Memorial Day - which is playoffs. Preliminary grade alignments trickle out to directors/coaches end of Feb. Then schedules a couple weeks before season starts. At least that's how it worked when I coached my older son

When do schedules come out?

Not before the season starts.

They are out! And it looks like your kid's team has a game every Sunday at 8:00 in the morning... at Long Reach...be there by 7:00 so you can watch the coaches stroll in around 7:30.

Season is 3/23 and 3/24 they will be out the 18th or 19th. They get floated to the coaches first for review. Lot's of "ice breakers" NL tourney starts this weekend. ML and Hawks host tourney's some teams have started play days. Hopefully someone will post some lacrosse insight here but not that likely.

The league has repeatedly sent out the first game to each team less than a week before the season starts. not the entire schedule, just the first game. So don’t expect a schedule the 18th or 19th unless they’ve gotten new blood at headquarters.