[quote=Anonymous]I guess I would argue that if you really cared about the sport and the betterment of kids there are actions that could be taken to minimize the corruption and inequity. If the lacrosse community put more pressure on US lacrosse and even drew attention to the discriminatory recruiting practices (ie only looking at kids from certain private schools) there could be changes. Lacrosse has talked about “growing the sport for years” however you can’t do that when you pander to and allow wealthy elites control a small insular community. America doesn’t want to watch professional lacrosse because it’s a bunch of wealthy entitled kids who were given opportunities no one else had. Not very appealing.
So, there's a lot baked into this. Nobody (at the mega-donor level) is leveraging college admissions officers for lax players. It seems like a little thing but it's *everything*. This makes it unique among "big public school sports" because it's not the NCAA 2.3 GPA minimum you have to worry about. It's whether or not you can qualify academically for that specific school. Maybe this is less true if you're a top 50 national player...but that's 50 kids per year.
And if you look at the top 5 or top 10 D1 lax programs, the average incoming SATs and GPAs are in the neighborhood of 1550 and 4.2. ...... important because most lax players who receive merit aid receive ACADEMIC aid, not athletic aid.
Then you have everything else - the cost of gear, cost of training, cost of clubs, parents having flexible white collar (or union) jobs to schlepp our kids around. Average lax parent (2021) spent over $9K per player. The average American has like $190 in savings so that has a big impact too.
So, if I was the CEO of USL, what would I do?
1) I'd knock out the holdback nonsense, which is happening, at least for the younger kids. By definition it creates unfairness through at least 7th grade.
2) I'd try to build a groundswell of support for nationwide rec teams. That's where "outlier level talent" can be found. You don't need 40 club teams per age bracket in a state (like we have) to find the very best talent.
3) I'd really try to set some rules in place for national corporate clubs, 3Step, 3D, True, etc. Instead of airdropping in and promising amazing (heh) programs if you can fork over the $3K, maybe they should be required to build up B and C level teams that also charge less in dues (and, sure, offer less training, fewer coaches, etc....let's be realistic).
4) I'd try to create a (money-losing), affordable (for families) player clearinghouse or a nonprofit-led national combine program, to bring exposure to kids from Baltimore to Utah to the Onandoga Reservation. I'd fund this with some money from the NCAA (maybe) as well as corporate lax sponsors, which should be doable in this NIL era. However since most of those companies have money invested in the pay-to-play showcases and combines, this would be very hard to keep revenue neutral unless Nike or UA (for example) had a big old change of heart.
What wouldn't I do? I would run away, fast, from any proposal to create Bishop Sycamore / St. Frances situations, thinking there's some new way to create equitable education for athletes that isn't just wiiiiiiiiiiiiide open to corruption and influence.
