I agree that most youth players are playing too much. But I would suggest that they are not playing enough "quality" lacrosse. If you are playing for your rec program and middle school you are playing too much lacrosse but not enough quality lacrosse. We recently made a change and dropped 2/4 options. My kid was playing:
1. Middle School Lacrosse
2. Rec Lacrosse
3. Club Lacrosse
4. Dukes Nationals
We are dropping:
1. Middle School Lacrosse
2. Rec Lacrosse
4. Dukes Nationals and replacing with Brotherly Love Nationals.
This leaves 2 out of 4 Just our regular club and Brotherly Love Nationals. We now anticipate our Spring/Summe schedule to be only 1-2 practices a week and the Sunday NXT League. We have literally three more days of family dinners PER week which is amazing. We have actually planned a couple of road trips this Spring as the NXT League is every other week.
We have never done this before, the time commitment is HALF yet I feel like we are picking a quality versus quantity approach. I am not claiming to have the solution but half the lacrosse time commitment yet play better quality....I am optimistic.
So you drop the affordable, community and school programs and keep the club and national? What about the bonding opportunity that's afforded by the school program for kids who will play in HS together? I'm curious to know if you have a bias. What club team do you belong to? I'm a little leery of the saccharine BL posts. Whether you're a BL insider or Dukes hater, you're not objective. I commend BL for expanding the business, but cloak your ads a little better.
