At the 2026, lots of BBL players at various tryouts.
Leading Edge making a push down to build teams before they get to 8th grade
Why is this any different than other years, they just cannot seem to draw the younger kids. Perhaps parents would rather stick with local programs, less travel for practices, etc. before committing to LE. The other problem is that many are turned off by the fact that LE does not show a ton of loyalty when the teams hit high school. LE has had some great high school teams over the years, but they have had a lot of trouble recently competing with the other NLF programs, many of those NLF teams know how to play the re-class game very well. Go to any large tournament and look at the players that teams like the Crabs are putting on the field in high school. While most teams have two or three big kids, these big MD programs have the size and height across the whole roster, not to mention the guest players that tend to show up. As for kids going to several tryouts, this is exactly what parents should do if they are not happy with their current product, but the grass is not always greener on a big name teams.
