My experience is that private schools skim the top 5 or 10 % of the players who would have otherwise gone to public school (scholarships and help with admissions). When you combined that with the fact that lax already skews to the upper end of the income distribution (ie players that are going to go private anyway) a disproportionate amount of the lax talent concentrates in a relatively few private schools (ie relative to the many public high schools in Maryland and northern Virginia).
The college recruiters know this and would rather go see a team at a private school that has multiple D1 quality players on the field and sometimes even on the bench rather than go to a public high school game that might have one or two D1 worthy players.
This creates a natural feedback loop where the best kids wanna go to where the coaches are and the best coaches want to go with the kids are. There’s no conspiracy or corruption it’s just a natural fact of life that advantage accuses to those who already have advantages.
The real problem I see is that the public school kids are given the message early on that there’s no future in public school lacrosse and the act accordingly (eg drop out of travel teams, skip showcases etc.). This drops their chances of playing college lacrosse to 0 and gives even more opportunities to the privates.
The way to handle this problem is to create a lax combine event where interested kids could be evaluated on an even playing field (no pun intended). You could have regional events a couple times over the summer and coaches wouldn’t have make a decision about where to go. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution but it would give the kids outside the lax industrial complex a chance.
Pretty new to all this with a kid who's highly athletically gifted (size, speed, agility, hand/eye etc) but picked up the sport only this past spring and frankly is really raw lax-wise from what i can see. We're a football and basketball family, with his older sibs (and both parents) having gone through this process and where there are combines. Assuming he figures out how to actually throw and catch effectively over the next few years - which i assume is just stick and field time but i know next to nothing about this beyond what extends to most team sports, like move the ball, pass where they aint, score more than the other guy etc - is there no speed and agility combine for lax recruiting? if not, is that bc it's less important than stick and field skill to play lax at the college level?
1. If he's headed to a HS with a non-notable lacrosse program, I wouldn't be looking behind HS until it becomes a near-obvious reality. Relax. The odds are astronomically poor unless he also lands on a Top 25 national club.
2. If he's headed to a school with a decent lax program, and cannot catch and throw hard passes, accurately *at least* the width of the field while moving his feet, he will not make JV let alone varsity. There is no way to clear the ball on defense, in a way that sets up a real offense, without good, hard, long passes. There is no way to teach a team a coherent offense if the ball is on the ground more than 10% of the time when working out at full speed. This is the part of the game that happens in August, in October, in June....500+ reps per day on the wall, both hands, different approaches, etc. People joke about "hit the wall" but if he can't catch a hard pass, this is the way.
3. He will need to demonstrate at least two out of the three by 11th grade, ideally 10th grade: above average size, speed, physicality. If it's mostly size, he'll play defense. If it's mostly speed, he'll have more chances to actually play with the ball. His HS coach will put him where he wants him.
4. Except for the top 150 or so players nationally, it's more important to get your #s at individual college prospect days, not combines or showcase camps. Those coaches want to see how fast you run at their elevation, in their weather, on their field. Further, you'd find the combine numbers pretty disappointing compared to "major" sports. A 4.79 40 time is lightning fast for a potential lax recruit. Which makes sense, if he's faster, he's probably a candidate to play a sport with more scholarship money than mens lax.
5. Lax IQ, rather than catching/throwing, is the thing that will be / can be / has to be the slow burn for your son. There's a lot of overlap with the way that hockey and basketball are played in terms of defensive sets and offensive plays, but it takes time for the boys to learn to look for certain things, like whether the guy they're guarding has shifted his weight to his left hip.
6. If he is learning a new sport or new position, do not get caught up in the BS politics of what's the best club, or the best position for him, 6 years from now. He needs to play on a club that will actually use him, whether that is the Bad News Bears or some legendary best-in-world club. If he is getting playing time, his shortcomings will start to appear, and he can train against those, just like any other sport. But if he is "on the #1 team in the country" and plays 2 minutes per game, he cannot get better, no matter how good the competition is during practice.
