It’s just ridiculous. How did it get like this? All this time and money. Lacrosse is a dead end sport. It’s not like baseball and football where you go on to play professional and make millions. I guess at least now you can play at some sort of “professional” level, but having it as a career is extremely rare. It just doesn’t make sense. Find a team that your daughter has FUN on and is improving her own skills. When she’s older and knows where she wants to go to college go to some prospect camps. Half these girls on these top teams on Long Island don’t even belong on them, they’re just dollar signs.
It's possible to care about performance and ranking among peers without seeing a professional career at the end of the tunnel... at any age. Some people like high level competition- especially once you consider the time and money that goes into travel ball.
Lacrosse may be a "dead end" by your definition, but it's not dead by the definition of a lot of people. Plenty of college commits have doors open that generally wouldn't have been available if it hadn't been for their dedication to lacrosse. But again, nobody is necessarily talking about potential for the future except for the "ranking girls is ridiculous" crew on here. It's like words are being put into the mouths of the competitive folks here. "Why do you like ranking girls? Because you have delusions of grandeur for the future?" Not necessarily. We just like setting observable goals, striving for them, and accomplishing them.
There's nothing saying that the top tier teams on the ranking list don't "have fun" or experience "improvement." And I can guarantee that showing up as #1-10 in the country probably makes things even more fun.
Further, postponing hard work and competition isn't going to get you any closer to "college" (but again, your focus, not mine). If you're not on one of these top-tier teams, there's no college worth looking at that's going to treat you seriously. And avoiding competition at this age isn't going to get you any closer to those top-tier teams. You think Hero's Green is accepting walk-ons in seventh grade from girls that don't already have a presence on an aggressive team? No shot.
If half of the girls on the top teams "don't belong there," then who does? Your kid who's playing fiddlesticks in the pool all summer? Criticizing the evaluation of teams by rank and then blindly criticizing the ability of the players on those teams is an absolute contradiction.
