Talk about a hard sell. We got the call from Dukes (like I’m sure everyone else has). He was pressing hard, saying they check report cards and that we should be honored that Dukes wants our son to play with them. He also said that roster numbers are fluid and one day your above the “travel line”, the next day you’re not. If you don’t go to all the mini camps, your sons spot on the depth chart is at risk. The whole time he kept saying “it’s not for everybody”, over and over or that his model of ranking kids doesn’t fit every player, sound familiar?
Dukes preys on a parents ego, telling them what they want to hear in order to get their $$$$. I’m surprised any parent would actually fall for this. But you know what they say, a fool and his money are easily parted.
We fell for it for a year or so, my son played. The report card aspect stopped about 2 years ago, right after they were supposed to have a banquet for the students athletes that parents paid for but the banquet was cancelled and parents had to chase up management for months to get the money back, if they ever did. The depth chart is a joke, no evaluations were ever provided to my son at any of the mini camps he attended around 15 of them. And yes, my son was above the travel line the entire time. Every tournament had 3/4 new players show up and play taking time from rostered kids. Still not sure why the kids below the travel line were not given opportunities to attend tournaments but kids not even on the team were. Plus,the kids on the team covered the cost of the tournament and show up players played for free. We got tired of the little to no communication, coach changes every couple of months and the increasing price of membership, equipment and mini-camps (started at $40 and ended at $85) with no change in mini camp practices. One positive of the experience was meeting some very nice families, my son is still friends with kids who were on the team with him. We are happy to be out and my son is getting better training and enjoyment out of playing lacrosse with a local travel team.
