In no way is anyone claiming or thinking that these new towns and high schools that have now found lacrosse is going to supersede or pass Garden City or Massapequa in the near future. Some of the New high schools may be strong in 2021 and have no one for 2022. I do not expect some of these high schools to be consistently producing Division I players like they have for 2021. However, I can tell you this, in our town given the Success of these 2021 players going to division one college programs our enrollment in PAL lacrosse is substantially higher. These new high schools on this list still lose a lot of players to baseball. As more and more of those kids go to college and play college lacrosse those high schools that are new will hopefully turn into lacrosse first high Schools. Garden City and other Traditional high schools still get their best athletes to play lacrosse. The new programs have not Reached that point yet. But hopefully will as what appears to be happening in our town with the younger kids now having higher registration in lacrosse.
Great players can come from any town, high school, state, country etc... Teams that win championships in Hotbed areas win with depth. You can have the best player in the country and not be able to beat a team with 15 - 20 very good players. Sometimes those championship teams happen to have the "best player" but most of the time they are just very deep with good "smart" team players. Its a team sport and it is almost impossible to win a championship without sufficient depth. When you look at the teams that have won New York State championships (at least in the modern era say the past 10 years) they seem to do it with depth. Some think its coaching or senior leadership (and that is important) but from what I have witnessed it is team depth that plays the biggest roll. Teams that have very strong junior, sophomore and even freshmen classes to complement their seniors seem to be the ones that win. I have witnessed many coaches try to ride a stud or two senior only to watch them become too fatigued to be effective. I am not familiar with the current GC Team but I am confident that they will remain a very competitive program that produces some great players.
