Honest question, how are Summit and ML not on this list...ML dismantled RFH in the TOC last year, just cannot understand why they are not stacked with commits
Good question. I'm thinking that they just have superior coaching that allows them to extract more wins from less talent?
I notice that many of their kids play for Laker Futures or Steps instead of Leading Edge/BBL/Tri-State. Do their HS coaches push them there? I'm wondering if the lack of elite club visibility impacts where they end up.
Summit runs a system offense and zone defense that doesn’t highlight individual players so they rarely generate superstars. That said, they do fairly well with commits yo high academic d1 and d2, especially Patriot league and NESCACs.[/quote]
I can shed some light here as we lived in Summit for 15 years and my son and daughter came up through the youth program. First, I would argue that Summit runs the best youth program in the state (ML a close second). Summit is a larger town with a rich lacrosse tradition so there is no shortage in talent in each grade. However, the caveat is that every year they will lose a large chunk to private schools. Every year is different but some years it is more than half the best players. Looking at my son's 8th grade "A" team, the high school breakdown was as follows: SHS: 7 Delbarton: 7 Pingry: 3 Lawrenceville: 1. The players who went to SHS played for the futures team, and the private school kids played for Patriot, LE, and BBL. Those were really the only options at the time; the number of clubs nowadays always surprises me. In fact, my son played on one of the inaugural Steps club teams for boys, at the time it was called the Steps Futures All-Star team and it was made up primarily of the best players from the Summit and ML futures teams. My understanding was that it was started as a way to entice the best players to stay in the futures programs and not go to one of the private clubs. The renowned Steps girls team was a good model to follow and the Summit and ML players provided a strong foundation. It is interesting now to see how the landscape of club allegiances has shifted due to coaching changes, for example Delbarton/Steps and SHP/Tri-State. Between Kovachik, Davidson, and Flynn, Steps has the best collection of coaches without a doubt.
The zone defense itself was designed to extract more out of less talent, it was famously born during the 2009 season. While I agree with you that Summit has not produced many superstars recently, this was not the case during the heyday. And the biggest star from Summit in 2009 was actually Delbarton's best player, a top recruit and UA All-American who went on to be an All-Ivy middie at Harvard. NJ overall had a lot of talent that year and had made a big splash that summer after winning the UA underclass tourney, a very big deal back then for recruiting. Anyways, after losing 10-6 to Delbarton in the season opener, Summit devised and implemented the zone as a way to neutralize Delbarton's one on one advantage. The rest is history of course and Summit would not lose again until nearly three years later. Delbarton would not beat Summit again until in 2012, after losing 9-4 to Summit in the regular season they decided to play zone themselves. I put the link to the game below, truly fool to see as it was the first and last time I have seen a Delbarton team run zone for an entire game. Delbarton's best player that year was also a middie from Summit who went on to win two national titles at Duke, starting to see a trend here?
2012 TOC Semi- Delbarton 5 - Summit 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcAXs4mlpCw&ab_channel=ChuckRuebling
