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

Yup that must be it. Enjoy B tournaments and Cabell.

Alright, let's see those scores from the Bmore Bloom tourney today

I know Crabs, Hawks, Leading Edge and Madlax were all there

Crabs were 1-1, beat Madlax close but lost to Chain Bridge all stars (bad loss imo)

Madlax Cap was 0-2

Hawks were 2-0, beating CBAS and winning late against Leading Edge

Leading Edge was 2-1, smoking CBAS, losing to the Hawks and beating Madlax

CBAS was 1-2

Leading Edge is legit. Hawks even more so. Even more impressive since LE had beaten both Next Level and FCA Blue last weekend. Crabs are big time up and down. Madlax and CM have some soul searching to do. Zero wins against the ranked teams the past two weekend.

Any results from Bmore Bloom?

Some very good 2028 action at Troy Park today. Scores:

Hawks 10-7 over Chain Bridge All Stars
Crabs 7-4 over Madlax
Leading Edge 10-6 over Chain Bridge All Stars
Hawks 9-8 over Leading Edge
Leading Edge 10-6 over Madlax
Chain Bridge All Stars 9-6 over Crabs

Takeaways:
Hawks and Leading Edge are two of the top teams in the nation. Perhaps the best two “non national” teams. Not sure who is better than those two… they play so well together, they’re well coached, and they have a bunch of great players throughout the roster. Was a fantastic game that was tied with .30 left when the slick Leftie Attack from Hawks won it late.

Crabs— way, way overhyped. Long way to go. Seemed disoriented, but they have some studs for sure. Will likely improve a lot through spring. BT I think their lace in HoCo to 4 is at serious risk.

Madlax— bringing in a bunch of flyins, they will compete if they don’t kiss their flights. A very good FOGO and big 47 is still effective. If it’s true that he’s one foot out the door— they’re a B team. He scored 3 of their 4 goals and wasted on the other one.

Chain Bridge All Stars— loaded with DC Express kids and a handful of Next Level kids. They were getting better as the day wore on, and they killed the Crabs in their last game. A parent told me they’ve never practiced together. So not really a team we will likely see again, but they looked to be having a lot of fun. Healthy respite from club lacrosse. Love seeing that stuff. Had nicknames on their jerseys, our boys loved that.

HoCo next week, should be fun!

What are the crabs’ “ups?” They squeaked by Madlax today and got rolled by a bunch of misfits from DCE and NL who were out there goofing around. Back to the drawing board. Hawks are on top

What are the crabs’ “ups?” They squeaked by Madlax today and got rolled by a bunch of misfits from DCE and NL who were out there goofing around. Back to the drawing board. Hawks are on top

Hawks are the Hawks. Always well coached (even tho the HC gives CM a run for his money in the insanity department), smart players all over the field, and lighting fast play.

LE is a very solid team. Their FO guy is a beast. Not only fast with his hands but shoots off the dot like a bolt of lightening. Very disciplined defense like the Hawks.

Crabs are a good team, but the pre season hype was a little much from what I saw yesterday.

CBAs won the day with their unis and having fun with their friends. We all know these kids and every one of them is good. Not surprised they held their own.

ML..had like 35 players on the sidelines. They have a long way to go to get back into the elite game.

Weather was an A+ for once.

Shoutout to the Weather!!

ML is in serious trouble. Huge roster, Fly-ins and majority of the team is made up of families that came over in the past year is a recipe for discontent. The only thing that can solve that problem is winning. Unfortunately, despite looking brilliant in spots ML is going to have trouble winning games. Too many mistakes are being made to fix them all in time for HOCO additionally look for the top players to be scraped off by DCE and NL by the summer.

3D New England belongs in that best real team conversation, too. We've played all three of those teams in the last year and 3DNE was right there with them. They look comically old, but the rules are the rules.

Easy to say the top (non/national) teams are in tiers:

Hawks
3DNE
2Way
Leading Edge

91 Venom
FCA MD Blue
BBL
Rhino ATL

Sweetlax
Crabs
Express North
Texas Nationals (not a real national team)

National teams:
Red Hots
WCS
MADdog National
Sweetlax Navy
Boston's Phinest/JM3

Lol, let’s get back to Hoco.Nice you got your first taste of competition last 2 weeks.

The fact you try to slip in the Crabs anywhere on this list is laughable!

If your kid is truly a player on one of these teams, he'll be a Top 100 guy come recruiting season. Congratulations. Beauty is that almost every single one of these teams can beat one another any given day.

I am no fan of Madlax, but it is comical that certain people seem so desperate to convince the Board (and themselves) that the team and the program is toast. But they seem to have nine lives, and through fly-ins and similar manipulations they will always put decent teams on the field and always make money. They won't win many popularity contests, but that has never been their goal, nor the goal of any travel lacrosse program. They are here to stay and get used to it!

Alright...

HOCO week 1 predictions

Hawks 9 FCA 6
Crabs 11 91MD 4
DCE 10 NL 5

Somehow Madlax got their week 1 game postponed for like the 12th year in a row. Shame the Team Money kids have to wait weeks to play a game now.

Share your predictions here!

This is a gossip blog. So you should expect the negative headlines. Lets deal with some facts, however. The poster above is right, the remaining ML players/parents who were loyal and didn't leave for greener pastures are not happy with the volume of fly ins. CM has always liked fly ins (mostly for the summer season), but the number of kids on the 28 team for HOCO is absurd. They have like 35 kids on the roster. For example, their two face off guys hail from Michigan and NY. Not to mention the local kids he stole from ither clubs and offered them a "discount" to get then onboard.

So you have families that could have left but stayed and now their playing time is reduced for a bunch of out of towners who pay less (I'm willing to wager many are free), obviously don't come to practice, and all the while paying the $6k+ for being in the program + all the travel costs to subsidize the rest of the team.

Call me fool but it's not surprising that the players/parents' patience is wearing thin and there will be another exodus. Maybe you are right and ML will be able to cobble together another team, but there is so much competition for players in the DMV nowadays my guess is the team will slide into obscurity and be a 2nd tier quasi-national team the entire time those boys are in HS.

This isn't my first time down this path and you can ask any parent with older children.....if the team is not good by their sophomore yr not many college coaches will come and watch during the recruiting window. Period.

It's a waste of money and ppl are catching on at that club.

Agreed, the bottom line is that it's a profitable brand and the teams they assemble look basically competent out there, and while everybody here is myopic into the top 20 teams nationally and the top 4 teams locally, let's remember that there's 300+ club teams out there at this age group, and it is certain that on any given day Madlax would beat all but 40-50 of them. And they'd win a few of those top 40-50 too. So (as Red Hots and Team Eighteen will tell you) there's plenty of interest from kids from OH to TX to CO to come play for them.

Fly ins or not-/ they will finish last or second to last in Elite.

Fair list. I'd probably add Freedom to the third tier. Well coached team with a tough defense.

Its the same recipe that True Annapolis tried last year.
Cabell will be Cabell and the parents who let it happen are doing their kids a disservice.

The trend is not your friend if you're with ML. On a downward slide since 2nd grade, but you'll always have 2018!

You guys are funny. You act as if you have a clue about the entire nation of lacrosse for boys who are going through puberty.

You're comment about Freedom is funny. You think because the Hawks be them by a few goals a week ago they are somehow third tier. You do realize they haven't practiced as a team until this week right? How many hours have the Hawks practiced together? Most of PA, NY, NJ and MA play town in the spring.

Freedom beat the Hawks and FCA at the end of last year. I'm guessing Freedom and Venom will be just fine by the time summer rolls around.

Looks like a good list. But no way FCA MD should be in there. They arent the team theyve been in years past.

Couple problems with this list:

1. Crabs should not be on it
2. Sweetlax FL or Upstate would definitely not be on this list…so the Sweetlax team you’re thinking of here is Navy, which is a national team, they are properly listed in the national group— NO CHANCE Upstate or Florida sniff this list. Not even close.
3. Do the kids on 3d New England play for other local teams, like 4 Leaf, Laxachussets, etc? If so— they are a borderline national team.

I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m simply stating verifiable facts:
1 the roster is huge
2 there are a lot of fly-ins
3 most of the players are new
4 ML’s play over the last 5 games was riddled with turnovers and poor shots.
5 other teams are actively trying to recruit MLs best players.

If any of those statements are false pls let me know. I’d like to be wrong. I hope these boys have a great final season of HOCO. But as I see it ML 28 Cap is In for a rough time.

Btw I’m not a Cab hater. He’s put together a good program that has won lots of tournaments and produced great college players.

Hold on a minute?! Is the Maryland-Lax-Dad-Official-Rankings Back?

This is a solid list that hard's to argue with with just a couple modifications. First, BBL is tier three and Express North is tier two. Second, I think that you meant FCA Upstate Navy ... Not Sweetlax Upstate. Friendly amendments accepted?

I have no idea whether points 1-5 are true, and they are not particularly verifiable, but true or not, you now sound even more desperate to prove something about MadLax. None of those five points spell doom in HoCo. My own son's team had a ton of poor shots and turnovers in their pre-season play, as did most teams they played against. a huge roster doesn't hurt at all; if the bottom 10 players are unhappy with their play time, they can leave, but it won't hurt the team. Madlax is known to be a revolving door, so of course other teams are recruiting their good players, but nobody can switch teams in-season, so rosters will be locked down soon, if not already. I assume you are referring to NL and DCE as the teams who are recruiting, but their own rosters are extremely bloated too, so they will have their own problems keeping everyone happy, and the last thing either one needs is more Madlax refugees. Other than the Hawks, all seven teams in the elite division (including Madlax, to be sure) have big questions to answer, and all seven have potential to be within a game or two of .500. let the games begin and try to focus on your son's current team, not his last team that obviously [Censored] hurt you really badly!

Yup Hawks by 10 this weekend.

You picked all three winners, but IMHO, Hawks will win by more than three, and the other two will be closer.

Quit crying over the Freedom lack of love at this point. You can only go by what has happened so far this year and unfortunately they have not looked great. So at this point in 2024, without practice, without weather, without yellow balls, without proper hand warmers, without time changes, without proper matching cleats, without whatever scores have been posted, or without whatever excuse you want to make....they have time to get the machine rolling, but for the love of all things lacrosse...stop making excuses!

Easy bro, why so defensive. I was just acknowledging that Freedom is a good team that should be on this list. Frankly I'd probably merge groups 2 and 3. Venom BBL EN and Freedom should really all be on the same tier. Any of those teams could beat each other on any given day. Haven't seen the new and improved Crabs to comment.

And I agree that the Sweetlax regional team should not be here. The national team is appropriately listed.

If you can avoid playing the week of some kids Spring Break, why would you not?

Madlax is staring at a 1-6 record in HoCo. 33 kids or not.

New US Club Lax rankings are out. You can def argue about rankings at the margins but I think in general these are usually accurate.

There's a club championship this summer for the Top 16 teams which looks like it could be cool.

Here's some rankings for Hoco Elite teams and other non-local teams mentioned on this board:

4-Hawks
12-Crabs
15-FCA
20-DCE
26-NL
34-ML
43-Team Money
46-Team 91

3-Red Hots
5-Leading Edge
10-BBL
11-3D NE
16-Philly Freedom

If you don’t know anything why are you writing? Slow work day?

Possibly. No Algorithms.

Non National Team Rankings-Top 10

1. 2Way
2. Hawks
3. 3DNE
4. Leading Edge
5. Rhino ATL
6. 91 Venom
7. FCA Blue
8. BBL
9. Freedom
10. Express North

Fun Fact- 2Way and the Hawks have never played. Maybe this will be the year. Anyone with knowledge of 2Ways summer plans? Outside of Rhino, (is Thunder the same team?!) the Hawks have beaten every single other top 10 squad in the past 18 months.

3DNE could easily end up on top of this list. Expect a Hawks v LE rematch this summer at point also. I'd expect ALL of these teams to be competing at the end of the big tourneys this summer. Easily 60-70 of the top 100 players at this age group come from these teams.

I'd rank the remaining DMV teams:

1. DC Express
2. Crabs
3. Next Level
4. Madlax
5. 91 MD
These remaining DMV area teams should all be in the Top 25 teams when added up.

National team rankings:
1. Red Hots National
2. Bostons Phinest/JM3
3. Mad Dog National
4. WCS
5. Sweetlax Navy

2-5 here are really
Interchangeable from tourney to tourney

Agree. Hawks win much bigger. FCA is just not as good as they've been in the past. Also, NL will play it much closer than 5 goals.

CM wants more time to convince 47 diesel to stay

Hawks 11 FCA 4
DCE 7 Next Level 3
Crabs 8 Team 91 6
Cabell 0 ML Haters 12