Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
There are three club teams in Baltimore and they each operate the same. If you want to play in the MIAA and hope to have a chance to play in college you need to play for one of them. What’s happening now only gets worse. It’s all about being seen!!

This is fundamentally false, and conflates all kinds of aspirational Daddy assumptions. MIAA-A Varsity and JV hold accommodate 600+ players. Let's ignore that "playing in the MIAA" could be expanded in definition. And let's look at the "3 Baltimore Club Pipeline" filling those 600 slots.



HS age roster for those 3 club teams is 3 teams x 30 kids x 4 years = 360 players "available for MIAA" in these 3 clubs, on their "real" elite teams (aka no FCA White, Crabs Hardshells, 91 Practice Team, etc).

360 - 40 kids who can't get in academically (or Spalding / John Carroll is too far) and also are 3rd line, non-recruited players = 320 elite club kids for 600 MIAA-A roster spots

320 - 20 kids whose parents have been led to believe through elementary and middle school that their elite club play will get them a "scholarship" and have no intention of paying MIAA-A tuition = 300 elite club kids for 600 MIAA-A roster spots.

30 kids who, despite the Elite Shiny Helmet, get their lunch stolen on day 1 of MIAA tryouts by random kids from Sidewinders and Team MD = 270 elite club kids for 600 MIAA-A roster spots.

80 kids who are OOS fly-ins for the 3 elite teams with no interest in MIAA = 190 elite club players for 600 MIAA-A roster spots.

40+ MD/DC/PA players will attend a public school or non-MIAA-A private school = 150 "elite club laxers." for 600+ roster spots.

Then divide that by 4 years, and explain to me how the only way for my 2027 son to grab one of these 600+ roster spots is to be one of those 150 kids.

The math ain't mathing.

My advice to parents is, ignore this [Censored], and do what middle school kids at Gilman and Loyola do - borrow a friend's elite helmets for school tryouts. You could walk the roadsides of Towson for 20 minutes and find a Crabs, FCA, or 91 helmet around, in a dumpster or [Censored] can or at the Goodwill on Joppa Road. Because the kids have such great memories of playing for those clubs. Buff it up real shiny and then all they have to do is play better and more coachable than the supposed "elite club kids" at MIAA tryouts for 3 total days. It's a model that works. And I'm not even joking.

Look at the top teams in the MIAA and see the clubs they play for and see how long they’ve been affiliated with their clubs. Most have been there a number of years if not their entire youth career. Best advice get on one of the top three clubs ( 91,Crabs, FCA) and work your [Censored] off to stay on the team. Bench warmers in these club teams end up starters on the MIAA roster. BTW you’ll also notice no public school kids are on any of these teams by seventh or eighth grade!!

I think you are using the 91 2023-2025 rosters as your benchmark and that's bad data for your purpose. Those 90 kids were intentionally assembled, carefully retained, and expertly recruited by the club director for a very specific reason - which is his prerogative. It would be a lie to say that he has not done a great job with those groups of kids. His extreme efforts have been extremely successful, but they have not, and will not, continue down into the younger classes. The "emotional investment" reality of dad coaches, after all.

There are plenty of public school kids on these clubs through 8th grade at least. Some will persist into HS because they didn't get a free ride to MIAA, or because they live 4 hours away in VA, PA, NC (91, Crabs, Hawks). Mostly public school kids. Kids from Delaware too, although they are private school kids.

The bulk (yes, benchwarmers) of the Towson MIAA squads just 2 years ago were Looneys, Koopers, Breakers, HoCo Pink, Zingos, and HLC. Now Koopers and Looneys are gone, and Breakers I guess will be put out of its misery soon, but all those "above average / not elite" lax kids aren't disappearing from MIAA rosters. With 50-60 kids on varsity at both CHC and Loyola, how could they disappear, mathematically? There's not enough elite kids. Maybe that's why they're called elite. Hopefully the bulk of the kids don't end up at True, because nobody wants to suffer through that.

You can continue to gatekeep elite club lax all you want, but the fact is that the sport is growing (with very low skill level) nationwide and (using Hoco brackets here) about 90% of MD-DC elite kids, 75% of our AAA kids, and 50% of the AA kids will have a chance to at least make rosters at MIAA schools AND "play at college" whatever that means. And (I'm an MIAA dad) some of those kids will attend public schools. Sorry that the Poors have been let into your elite sport and your identity, I guess.

So. Many. Words.

And so much time you put into this post. 🤡

Adult life is no different than 6th grade, when you lose an argument, you make fun of the winner for Trying Hard. I'll be honest, I love to see it.

And for what it's worth, my post took about 15 seconds to figure out and less than 3 minutes to type up. Probably another 10 second delay, getting the verification code wrong the first time. That you think this level of writing is a major academic undertaking says a lot about you, and gosh, I love to see that too.