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

We def cannot afford private school, and didn’t like the predators. We have a good home where we are. But outside of rec/clubs there isn’t much up here. lutherville is too south

HoCo is still 7 months away… let’s talk fall ball. What events will we see the Elite teams?

MD Invitational at Blandair
Bay Bridge Brawl
NAL
Millon 8
Sweet 16

ML at NAL, Md Invitational, and Bay Bridge

Gotta travel if you want to play elite and play D1 . And if you dont like talk of Baltimore org, you future is at best D2/D3 bench .

I think he asked about the Elite teams.

This guy smh

This area is so corrupt and beyond obnoxious about it

The Monuments? Capital? Dogs? Which Madlax team is playing this fall?

If I'm the first to tell you this, I'm sorry for it. But I'm going to lay it out below and you can either accept it, or find another sport for your son.

Youth lacrosse is not a meritocracy and it never has been, and even in the hinterlands it is not. This is a region where even mid-range players are pretty serious and could go be starters on most HS teams in 10th grade, west of the MS River.

Things that are not fair (aka "corrupt" in your eyes) that are realities in lacrosse, sports, and life:
1) Major donor dads (happens at public and private schools alike)
2) Daddy Coaches pushing the ball to their son for 10 years straight
3) How much money can Dad spend on training, tournaments, and showcases
4) What age does the player start to get "fast" (it's not a work ethic thing)
5) What age does the player get "tall" (not a work ethic thing)
6) Whether a kid lives within driving distance of a "good lax school / club"
7) Coaches making ill-informed choices in tryouts (it happens)
8) Getting sold a bogus sales pitch from a coach or director (you don't know, until you know!).
9) Coach automatically chooses your position for you based on your race, height, etc (not work ethic or skill)
10) Player's parent chose to not hold them back for 1-2 graduation years.

The reality in life is that sometimes we benefit from these inequities and sometimes we do not. Instead of whining about it, I recommend you spend time with your son figuring out does he want to engage with this process of "lacrosse advancement" - with all its warts and unfairness (Just like life) - or does he want to disengage and hope that something "more fair" comes along (which, "more fair" in your eyes will most realistically be a sport or activity where you have most of the privileges listed above, and just don't realize it).

Screaming into the void that "lacrosse isn't fair" will only get you three responses - the one above, or an eye roll, or the response from people who benefited from the above, professing that they don't exist, or aren't really a problem.

So you'll have to figure it out on your own lol.

“Madlax Chesapeake”

Unfortunately it is the truth . No matter how much you smh.

Well said.

I guess I would argue that if you really cared about the sport and the betterment of kids there are actions that could be taken to minimize the corruption and inequity. If the lacrosse community put more pressure on US lacrosse and even drew attention to the discriminatory recruiting practices (ie only looking at kids from certain private schools) there could be changes. Lacrosse has talked about “growing the sport for years” however you can’t do that when you pander to and allow wealthy elites control a small insular community. America doesn’t want to watch professional lacrosse because it’s a bunch of wealthy entitled kids who were given opportunities no one else had. Not very appealing.

All high level sports require time, money, commitment. I don’t see the barriers you’re alluding to… if kids are really good at lacrosse, they’ll find their way onto the top teams (and they will play for free if they can’t afford the dues). And if they’re good players on the top club teams, they’ll get recruited.
The elitist aspect is that most of the good college programs happen to be, for the large part, in the northeast and East where the Ivy’s and little Ivy’s exist.

So you are claiming that college coaches have conspired together to recruit from only private schools to discriminate against non private school kids? For what reason would they do that? If there are a bunch of quality college level players from public schools not getting recruited, wouldn't it take just one coach to capture that group and dominate?

So, there's a lot baked into this. Nobody (at the mega-donor level) is leveraging college admissions officers for lax players. It seems like a little thing but it's *everything*. This makes it unique among "big public school sports" because it's not the NCAA 2.3 GPA minimum you have to worry about. It's whether or not you can qualify academically for that specific school. Maybe this is less true if you're a top 50 national player...but that's 50 kids per year.

And if you look at the top 5 or top 10 D1 lax programs, the average incoming SATs and GPAs are in the neighborhood of 1550 and 4.2. ...... important because most lax players who receive merit aid receive ACADEMIC aid, not athletic aid.

Then you have everything else - the cost of gear, cost of training, cost of clubs, parents having flexible white collar (or union) jobs to schlepp our kids around. Average lax parent (2021) spent over $9K per player. The average American has like $190 in savings so that has a big impact too.


So, if I was the CEO of USL, what would I do?
1) I'd knock out the holdback nonsense, which is happening, at least for the younger kids. By definition it creates unfairness through at least 7th grade.
2) I'd try to build a groundswell of support for nationwide rec teams. That's where "outlier level talent" can be found. You don't need 40 club teams per age bracket in a state (like we have) to find the very best talent.
3) I'd really try to set some rules in place for national corporate clubs, 3Step, 3D, True, etc. Instead of airdropping in and promising amazing (heh) programs if you can fork over the $3K, maybe they should be required to build up B and C level teams that also charge less in dues (and, sure, offer less training, fewer coaches, etc....let's be realistic).
4) I'd try to create a (money-losing), affordable (for families) player clearinghouse or a nonprofit-led national combine program, to bring exposure to kids from Baltimore to Utah to the Onandoga Reservation. I'd fund this with some money from the NCAA (maybe) as well as corporate lax sponsors, which should be doable in this NIL era. However since most of those companies have money invested in the pay-to-play showcases and combines, this would be very hard to keep revenue neutral unless Nike or UA (for example) had a big old change of heart.

What wouldn't I do? I would run away, fast, from any proposal to create Bishop Sycamore / St. Frances situations, thinking there's some new way to create equitable education for athletes that isn't just wiiiiiiiiiiiiide open to corruption and influence.

You make great points that I would totally support. Rec and township programs that are low cost are a great way to increase access. Speaking to high schools and colleges I realize there is quite a spectrum of quality of schools and students. What has been disappointing is to see a trend where 10-15 years ago you would have found a much greater representation of public school kids on every level of college roster including your top D1 teams. Today, there is a much smaller representation of public school kids on those rosters. There are many coaches who will not even look at a kids info if they are not from certain private schools (as told to me by a college coach). So there are many good players from excellent public high schools, with 4.0 GPA, and 1400+ SAT, who can’t get certain schools to even look at them. Then it becomes a community and reality only in certain communities. There is a strong myth in the lax world that only the smart and talented players are always “known” and rightfully scouted/discovered and there couldn’t possibly be any other talented players out there. I know a lot of people don’t care, but the sport could benefit from a lot more diversity of all kinds.

Coaches spend their limited time focusing on where they are most likely to find kids who can play. What coaches do in recruiting is 100% based on the environment they have to compete in and everyone of them is always trying to get an edge. Their behavior just illustrates the demographics of the recruiting landscape - it doesn't create it.

The real question is, why is most of the top lacrosse talent migrating to private schools? I have a couple theories but I think the strongest is that it is a byproduct of club lacrosse consuming rec lacrosse. It keeps becoming more expensive to continue playing lacrosse so mostly wealthier families continue through middle school and they are far more likely to choose private school. Then a feedback loop starts where the public high school programs get weaker and an experienced player will seek private school just for the competition - when otherwise the family would have been content to stay public.

I think we all agree that the course of action should be to somehow strengthen rec and town programs to keep more kids playing longer regardless of how well off the family is. An elite athlete doesn't need year round lacrosse through elementary and middle school to develop into a D1 talent. They just need continuing exposure to develop a passion and core skills. Unfortunately for every attempt there is to provide affordable options there are 2 or 3 well funded efforts to expand expensive (and profitable) options (I'm talking to you True). It will not be an easy path.

How many public school kids or kids that intend to go to public high school are on teams like Hawks, FCA, Crabs, 91, Predators? Probably 5% or less. Are the public school kids major contributors or are they just filling the roster?

The number is clearly high than 5%. It might be closer to 20%.

Kids get plenty of exposure to college coaches with their club, as long as those teams are in the top 50. A few kids go D1 from teams like Severna Park every year.

Public school kids on HoCo elite clubs is likely 5-10%. My son is on one with 0 public school kids. Once those kids are on the older elite teams they'll get huge pressure from hs coaches and the other parents to also go private. There are some who will stay public and they'll get the same exposure at club tournaments as the other kids so they should be fine. I think they may lose some development missing the competition at Spring practices that you'd get at a high level private school. There are 5-10 public school kids a year that go D1 from the DMV so it can be done.

Severna Park and Broadneck are both D1 feeders. Not sure what the % is for public schools if you take those two out.

In NJ, 50% of the D1 players come from public schools.

In the DMV it sounds like it's probably closer to 10%.

Do you think this is because you can't reclass staying public? No judgement and not trying to start the reclass debate.

Trying to understand why such a higher % of the D1 kids in DMV come out of the privates. There's enough talent in a condensed area in the DMV that you should be able to field competitive public HS lax teams with D1 talent.

It makes a lot more sense to me that the non-hotbed states would see all of their D1 talent gravitate to private schools because there's not enough talent in any one public school to challenge a D1 player.

Out west it’s literally 99% of the D1’s come from private schools. My kid’s 8th grade team in MD would wax every public high school team in CA. But when it comes to water polo… different story

My experience is that private schools skim the top 5 or 10 % of the players who would have otherwise gone to public school (scholarships and help with admissions). When you combined that with the fact that lax already skews to the upper end of the income distribution (ie players that are going to go private anyway) a disproportionate amount of the lax talent concentrates in a relatively few private schools (ie relative to the many public high schools in Maryland and northern Virginia).

The college recruiters know this and would rather go see a team at a private school that has multiple D1 quality players on the field and sometimes even on the bench rather than go to a public high school game that might have one or two D1 worthy players.

This creates a natural feedback loop where the best kids wanna go to where the coaches are and the best coaches want to go with the kids are. There’s no conspiracy or corruption it’s just a natural fact of life that advantage accuses to those who already have advantages.

The real problem I see is that the public school kids are given the message early on that there’s no future in public school lacrosse and the act accordingly (eg drop out of travel teams, skip showcases etc.). This drops their chances of playing college lacrosse to 0 and gives even more opportunities to the privates.

The way to handle this problem is to create a lax combine event where interested kids could be evaluated on an even playing field (no pun intended). You could have regional events a couple times over the summer and coaches wouldn’t have make a decision about where to go. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution but it would give the kids outside the lax industrial complex a chance.

Pretty new to all this with a kid who's highly athletically gifted (size, speed, agility, hand/eye etc) but picked up the sport only this past spring and frankly is really raw lax-wise from what i can see. We're a football and basketball family, with his older sibs (and both parents) having gone through this process and where there are combines. Assuming he figures out how to actually throw and catch effectively over the next few years - which i assume is just stick and field time but i know next to nothing about this beyond what extends to most team sports, like move the ball, pass where they aint, score more than the other guy etc - is there no speed and agility combine for lax recruiting? if not, is that bc it's less important than stick and field skill to play lax at the college level?

1. If he's headed to a HS with a non-notable lacrosse program, I wouldn't be looking behind HS until it becomes a near-obvious reality. Relax. The odds are astronomically poor unless he also lands on a Top 25 national club.

2. If he's headed to a school with a decent lax program, and cannot catch and throw hard passes, accurately *at least* the width of the field while moving his feet, he will not make JV let alone varsity. There is no way to clear the ball on defense, in a way that sets up a real offense, without good, hard, long passes. There is no way to teach a team a coherent offense if the ball is on the ground more than 10% of the time when working out at full speed. This is the part of the game that happens in August, in October, in June....500+ reps per day on the wall, both hands, different approaches, etc. People joke about "hit the wall" but if he can't catch a hard pass, this is the way.

3. He will need to demonstrate at least two out of the three by 11th grade, ideally 10th grade: above average size, speed, physicality. If it's mostly size, he'll play defense. If it's mostly speed, he'll have more chances to actually play with the ball. His HS coach will put him where he wants him.

4. Except for the top 150 or so players nationally, it's more important to get your #s at individual college prospect days, not combines or showcase camps. Those coaches want to see how fast you run at their elevation, in their weather, on their field. Further, you'd find the combine numbers pretty disappointing compared to "major" sports. A 4.79 40 time is lightning fast for a potential lax recruit. Which makes sense, if he's faster, he's probably a candidate to play a sport with more scholarship money than mens lax.

5. Lax IQ, rather than catching/throwing, is the thing that will be / can be / has to be the slow burn for your son. There's a lot of overlap with the way that hockey and basketball are played in terms of defensive sets and offensive plays, but it takes time for the boys to learn to look for certain things, like whether the guy they're guarding has shifted his weight to his left hip.

6. If he is learning a new sport or new position, do not get caught up in the BS politics of what's the best club, or the best position for him, 6 years from now. He needs to play on a club that will actually use him, whether that is the Bad News Bears or some legendary best-in-world club. If he is getting playing time, his shortcomings will start to appear, and he can train against those, just like any other sport. But if he is "on the #1 team in the country" and plays 2 minutes per game, he cannot get better, no matter how good the competition is during practice.

This is true, but let's walk this out a bit. The same is said for Robinson HS in Fairfax (5A, multiple state championships) and on average they send 1 player to D1 per year. Broadneck - I think - does a little better than that. But I compare that to even a mid-level MIAA team like Loyola, where all 5 varsity goalies had D1 offers at the end of last season.

Riverside in VA prob trumps Broadneck and Severna Park, who are “feeders” to UMBC and Christopher Newport. Based on Inside Lacrosse commits, Riverside has sent 4-6 kids eachnof the last couple years to school like Virginia, Towson, Navy, Jacksonville, Utah, etc.
While the public High Schools in VA are maybe more competitive against the privates in general, they’re still not competitive. I just happen TJ think the sheer lack of private school options in NoVa lends itself to more kids staying public, whereas in Baltimore, there are like 10-12 great private schools with big lacrosse pull. Most elite kids in MD end up private. Not all, but most. VA has more that avoid the shlep to Gonzaga, Prep, Bullis or Landon.

useful stuff, especially 5 and 6, thanks. to be fair this sport's culture doesn't seem any loonier than the other sports we've been through, just a lot smaller an echo chamber and a lot less focused on the actual mechanics of playing the game or improving at it. the parents/trainer/coach dynamic isnt all that different imo. if a kid is a football or basketball prodigy, he gets recruited regardless of where he went to school, which is how it should be, to me anyway, though i guess that has more to do with how broad the scouting reach is for those vs lax. scholarship isnt really the desire, he just apparently really likes to play. besides as you said there's no real scholarship money in this sport it seems. ive got one kid at D1 and another at D3. The bill is different but the D3 kid is happier. no clue what that means beyond having the right perspective is always good.

Football and basketball are no different. The most elite basketball players most often play in private school. The best teams are private school teams. The best players in basketball run trough privatized AAU teams. Football is slowly moving in that direction with 7 on 7.

You people are being overly dramatic with the lacrosse theatrics. And obviously don’t have children who are high level athletes in other sports.

What happens when the best kid on your rich club team is a public school kid? That really hurts the parents.

Really? Quick question- where is the Broadneck state champion Senior who was player of the year headed next year? That tells you all you need to know.

Not really. Nobody's emotionally invested in this argument except public school parents. Private school parents,for all their annoying flaws, recognize that choosing a school district or a private school is (hopefully) a thoughtful and individual process for every family.

I do not think parents really care.....

I love that lacrosse combine idea. I would just add that evaluators don’t get to know anything about where a player is from. I have seen a lot of biases when it is known what team a player is on. I have been through the college process for both football and lacrosse and lacrosse is way worse in regards to the fact that there are far fewer opportunities and it is way more elitist. Lacrosse recruiting is heavily restricted to specific private schools and clubs and it is a very insular culture. There is way more opportunity in football for kids from a variety of places. It helps that there is not a real club system in football. 7s is minimal and only applies to certain positions. Look at a college football roster and you will see a much greater diversity of high schools as compared to lacrosse. It is just a shame because the sport will never grow and reach its potential with this system. Not to mention so many kids are missing out on an awesome game. Jared Neumann one of the best defenders in the PLL didn’t start playing until senior year in high school. He was a basketball player. Eventually he gets to play in college and look at him now. That would never happen today.

You'd be surprised how much some of the private schools will offer for good students. We looked at both John Carroll and McDonogh

Love how you threw Preds in here as a high-end team chock full of private school, D1 talent.

I find it rather interesting (disingenuous?) that with September right around the corner there is suddenly "talk" of "creating a national combine" for lacrosse just as the regional events for a certain National Combine event are gearing up. Creative marketing? Generate discussion with out having to spend on advertising? From the write ups I've seen, not a top tier event for elite recruits.

Take it to the HS boards.