ML will struggle beat anyone elite without guest players and their big holdback. (They even lose with the big holdback when the out of state kids don’t show up).
Recent few games - Lost to NXT at naptown (with out of state player). Waxed by FCA.
Expect Cab to go full recruiting with even more out of state kids. Madlax long time kids will see more of the bench.
Cab will NOT be ok with finishing third or fourth and not winning tournaments.
NL parent here. The trolling of madlax is silly and hopefully not from one of our parents. What I'm getting from the fall tourney readouts/banter and our own experience esp. from playing 2Way three times in the past 4 months is that there's likely going to be a bunch of reshuffling + sorting this 7th grade year. That goes for players and teams. The equation for success is pretty simple. Your elite team of 12- and 13-year olds hits puberty faster than other teams or you bring down (reclass) or your elite team recruits kids who were very good lacrosse players as boys and are now solidly built young men. Middling clubs are suddenly dominant ones, almost overnight. To a point made earlier, I haven't seen anything in the way of dangerousness (should-be 9th grader running over young 7th grader) that concerns me. Maybe that changes as I see the boys play more. But for now I think you're going to see teams made up primarily of boys playing against teams of young men. Roughly the same age grouping (12-14) and similarly skilled but wildly different in terms of body composition. I'm assuming that vets of the club lacrosse scene on this board will report that it takes a couple of years to sort all of this out ... before we know who emerges as best players and teams. And, by then, everyone is focused on recruiting, HS lacroses, and not thumping their chest about club dominance.
