US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Boys 2028 Grads - Mid Atlantic Region

This is one of life’s great mysteries. Half of Madlax’s kids are from VA.

Answer: parents falling for sales pitches. And then burning out on the club lax product. Maybe even refocusing on the national teams.

In terms of sales pitches, until a year ago you had ML and VLC clogging the airwaves, and as recently as 2021 that Cavs team was a repeat winner at AAA.

A few parents of great players even fell for the True VA sales pitch. Took them out of the market for 2 years.

But overall too few "elite" players by middle school and parents want different things, now that they've seen what they don't want.

What Cavs team? 2028?

The market is RIPE for someone (particularly a young student who recently played) to come along who is willing to coach (without a kid on the team). Wouldn’t take much…. Loads of talent in NoVa.

I'm not sure this is right. I'm not a defender of the program generally, but MadLax has been playing at an elite level with a VA-heavy roster since third or fourth grade. And if that team had a non-dad coach or even if their dad coach had toned it down then they probably could have attracted the best players from other NOVA rosters and been a force, but obviously the opposite happened.

VLC/Cavs folded all of their 2028 teams a year after folding 2027, and 2029 is struggling. Those programs combined and the result was somehow 1 + 1 = 0. If it was one team then maybe you could blame the parents, but with failing teams across multiple years it's hard not to think the organizations themselves a mess.

True seems like they're killing it in places like Boise and Duluth, but seems to struggle everywhere there are established options.

I think Top Caliber is still around?

I don't think there are a lot of VA guys playing for national teams and I don't think huge numbers have stopped playing relative to a couple years ago. I think there are a lot of them driving to MD because the clubs are much better run.

I guess it can be viewed that way…all of those stellar programs couldn’t beat NL by more than 2 points? And NL is a team that can’t score![/quote]

I'm not going to call the team average, but winning teams find ways to win. If NL is losing so many games by so few goals then they aren't a winning a team. I think they will do better in HOCO next year, but they definitely have some work to do.[/quote]

Someone with a logical statement!

You are correct about VLC/Cavs. The upper management would not work or listen to the parents and then they left and went to teams like BLC and Madlax. I am still trying to find out why Crabs did not step in and try to save the program.

Crabs cares about VLC about as much as they care about Hardshells. They don’t.

Because it’s really hard to build and sustain a business built on nighttime and weekend business where you are also real estate dependent.

Does anyone have any info on the Hawks? Only thing I have heard is they added several kid, none of which will get pass the second line.

We're saying some of the same things except that your "where'd they go" answer makes more sense than mine in the youth lax world (though admittedly driving from Fairfax to Bethesda for 6pm practices makes little sense at all).

Hawks dads are being pretty tight lipped!

What would you like to know? And the 2nd line Hawks players definitely have opportunities to play.

What specifically are you caring to hear about?

I’m not a Hawks parent but I’m guessing the update is that they will continue to be really, really good at playing lacrosse.

Hawks are gonna get rolled by FCA this year.

FCA picked up Preds backup player……enough said.

Getting back to MadLax .... I just checked out their web page and the players who I heard have left are now removed, they are showing 22-23 players listed on both their Capital and DMV teams. I don't know if the players are any good, but they seem to have backfilled very quickly. Cabell has been doing this ($$$) for almost thirty years and he knows what he is doing!

Not with the new rules

I would love to guess by name which madlax soldierette posted that. Get a life ma’am.

Nice pickup, Preds backups are better than most starters . Talk of Baltimore

They only new additions are 3 True players, a kid who was cut from NL and a kid from the DC Ex B team. They lost 9 pretty key players. They also have 2-3 national kids listed who will only play with them sporadically. Needs to do some more recruiting.

MadLax is in a great place. Fully loaded Capital and DMV rosters with 23 players each. They have the new student goalie, the double holdback, a new pipeline from True, and the fly-ins are starting to come, and only going to increase into HS. The competition in the 2028 class is not much. DCE is unproven, Next Level is underperforming, VLC has folded, True Chesapeake has folded too. MadLax is gonna win so much the kids are gonna get tired of winning!

There are at least 5 non local kids (MA, TX, NH, etc) on that roster. Which is fine but it’s not 2-3.

Wow! The roster losses from Madlax are significant. Best attackman gone. Best d-middie gone. A few key offensive midfielders gone. Two key poles gone. Assuming the bulk of those kids went to DCE, I think DCE will be competitive next year. Below Hawks and FCA by a decent margin, but even with Next Level and Crabs. Madlax with the current roster will struggle to beat Team 91. So for elite, the tiers likely as follows:

Tier 1 - Hawks and FCA
Tier 2 - Crabs, Next Level, DCE
Tier 3 - Team 91 and Madlax

I am guessing your kid plays on Madlax or your from Madlax...

you guess wrong, I would never put my kid anywhere near MadLax. I have two sons who are both is on good (but not great) teams with coaches who are great role models and kids who get along and have played together for years. But I was making the point that everyone is saying MadLax is toast and they overlook the fact that Cabell has been doing this for many years and will always gets plenty of kids, especially in 8th grade and above when the pool to draw from is national. it is a crappy program in so many ways but very successful ($$) in others.

Your take is actually dead wrong. Madlax teams peak in 3-4th grade. As the kids approach puberty, they quickly grow tired of the incessant nonsense from CM. They go to NL, DCE, etc. Madlax literally does not have a top 25 team above 6th grade at the moment. And they were all top 5 when they were younger.

Not to mention the only 3 kids who have ever taken a face off the last 3-4 years— gone. They’ve got real problems, and this take is correct, the will really struggle to beat anyone in HoCo with what’s left.

My son plays for a competitor to Madlax, he said a couple of his buddies still there have tried to move on to DCE and apparently were turned away due to the roster being set. Tale of two very different programs, at least for the moment, with one struggling to fill a lineup without having to use flyins, the other (DCE) turning good players away.

PP here - everything you say is accurate, but my own post is accurate too. MadLax has a great business model ($$) because they have two teams in every class, some girls teams (I think), tons of revenue from tournaments, including hotel kickbacks, plus clinics, plus the store (mortar and online), plus lots I'm probably missing. Maybe their teams are not as good as NL and DCE, nor as good as MadLax itself used to be, but they still charge just as much as those other programs, if not more, and customers are still lining up. There are plenty of local families who remain willing to play for both Capital and DMV teams (don't ask me why) plus families from outside the area willing to fly in and play. That's not changing anytime soon. If the program is thriving financially, why would CM care if a team is ranked 6 or ranked 30. I'm not wrong.

Well that is interesting. Does DCE 2028 have an orange team like the older DCE teams do? If not, then they are going to suffer from roster bloat.

How many players did DCE end up with? they had a big BLC team and took what 10 ML players as part of the package deal? Seems like a lot of kids will be fighting for playing time and the ML parents were probably promised a lot of it to come over.

Yeah, there's an Orange team, apparently will play in AAA next season. There's some good players on that squad who mainly got moved down from BLC Blue because they haven't hit puberty yet, or just are good athletes who need a little seasoning. Would not be surprised if a few moved back up to Black next year. NL Red I heard is also playing AAA so this seems like one of those rare scenrios where dropping down to the second team makes some sense, because both of those teams are only playing one division below Elite. ML DMV can't say the same, they were/are in B. NL and DCE have a nice internal pipeline going.

There is a 2028 DCE Orange team.

DCE does have a 2028 Orange team.

Yes, there is a 2028 Orange team. They had something like 80 kids at tryouts. The Orange team will be a pretty good B team, up there with NL Red.

I’m hearing 24-25. They only took 8-9 BLC kids, they grabbed 8-9 Madlax kids, and they picked up some players from VLC, True Chesapeake, and maybe another random kid from here and there.

yes, that will get interesting. We are finally getting great new players and can beat Next Level and MadLax and everyone! yay! But wait a minute, do some of these players great new players play the same position as Timmy? uh oh.

This is a shockingly thoughtful and reasonable take, are you sure you’re in the right forum?

We’re going for more of a If yOu’rE nOt In ELiTe iN tHIrD gRaDe yOu’RE lAcRoSse cAREeR Is OvER type vibe.