Thanks Hawks Dads for the reports on your awesome tryouts. Still waiting for one of you to answer why Hawks don’t play local 2025 teams. Your lack of respect for every local 2026 team is obvious, so why are you afraid to take on teams that you consider your peers?
I think it is the direct lack of respect for your dense question that no one is answering.
It’s not a dense question. It’s a legit one. Why don’t they play up? All they do is talk about how no one can beat them in 2026. So play up. I didn’t ask the question, but would love an answer as well. Heck why doesn't the coaching staff chime in and tell us.
Yeah, Pretty sure none of the coaches or any Dad’s who actually played the game at a high level are on these forums!
I have seen a lot of posts explaining how playing against hold backs makes players get better and how this would prepare kids for HS lacrosse when they would play against kids several years older. So if that is the true, it makes total sense that the Hawks should play up. How can the Hawks players prepare for HS competition when they always play against weaker and smaller opponents? It's great that they win all of their games but at what cost? Are we witnessing a train wreck come HS?
And this, in a nutshell, is the failure of this forum.
What this forum has become is an arrogant subset of parents, from a dominant and very well developed and coached seventh grade lacrosse team, gloating and trying to convince us that our teams and boys will never amount to anything. That then creates the retaliation from everyone else.
What this forum could be, is a place where parents could exchange ideas and information on how best to develop their sons prior to High School when the responsibility of development during Middle School, largely falls on our shoulders.
As an example, there have been numerous studies, if you actually care to educate yourself, in the Birth Year sports like Hockey and Soccer, that show that playing down, and not up, is actually the way to develop faster. There are exceptions to this rule but we don't have time to get into those.
That is why holding your kid back, although not usually the ethical thing to do, actually works as long as he has the genetics and work ethic to carry him to the next level in high School and College.
I have all kinds of other good development strategies that you could employ outside of your sons program, that I have gotten from mentors in this industry that know what they are talking about and if you knew who my son was, you would know that those strategies work.
But no one actually wants to enter into any kind of real exchange of information on this useless forum so you will go back to bashing each other.
I'm done coming on here. I'm not learning anything here that will help my son be a better player.
Good luck with your sons development and I truly hope that his goals are realized now and in the future.
signed,
Not a Hawk Dad that has a son on another HoCo Elite team.
