US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums Like Post

Hilarious how serious some people take this girls LAX recruiting landscape. The coaches must giggle about the LAX parents when they get together.
Admittedly, I was there once and have since had an epiphany.


Anyone who looks at girls LAX as anything more than a hook to get into a school you might not have otherwise been accepted to is kidding themselves. There is no sustainable future at this point in girls LAX after college unless you plan to go in to professional coaching, club ownership, or event operation. Contrary to some popular belief and generally speaking, there is no significant scholarship money for non revenue generating college athletics unless you are at the tippy top of the pyramid (maybe top 10%). If Title IX did not exist there would not even be a discussion about this. There is way more scholarship money for students than there is for athletes. If one of your primary goals with your student athlete is getting athletic scholarship funds, I would strongly suggest you dump $10K a year into tutors instead of girls LAX. I guarantee the ROI will be much better. I have not completed this process and frankly don't care if we do or don't. Club LAX or No LAX and a great college experience for my mine would be just fine. For all the opinions on this forum, I sure don't see a lot of discussion on ROI and what the actual PWO and athletic scholarship contracts look like. In fact, many people start clamming up if you are bold enough to ask them about it after a player commits and announces on social media. I see many commitments and only a very few with PWO mentioned when in fact it is probably the majority that are PWOs. I have spoken to enough people to understand that very few girls get any significant athletic money. Seems like the top few in each recruiting class and a couple goalies on each team consume the majority of the 12 scholarships available in a fully funded program. When I put pen to paper and break this down, the results always look the same no mater how I try to slice it up. 12 scholarships for 30-40 girls means there is close to nothing available for probably 60%-70% of the D1 commits. In theory, if a coach is doing it right, her 15-18 primary players that see the field are probably receiving the vast majority of scholarship funds. I would love to hear from some folks who have had 1st hand experience with one or more of their daughters.

All that being said, once you get past the top 10% of players, which is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400 kids per year its all a crapshoot. The stars need to align and there is a PWO spot ready for just about every player depending on how badly they want to "continue their education and athletic careers". Once a family realizes their player is not in the 10% club and her life dream is not necessarily to play college lacrosse ...... getting the player into a school she wants to go to whether that path includes LAX or not should be the goal.