Player Ratings and Rankings

[Matnum PI]

Class of 2022 - Top 10 Junior Rankings

https://twitter.com/tyxanders/status/13 ... 3455870976

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://twitter.com/tyxanders/status/13 ... 3455870976

I see birthdays are finally listed. Like I have said for years, lacrosse is one of the few sports where kids are rewarded for playing down. My son was always the very youngest and spent the vast majority of his soccer career playing up.... like most of the good players. No soccer or hockey coach in his right mind would be interested in a player playing down 1 or 2 years.... Yes hockey players arrive on college campuses old but they are evaluated and recruited based on play against their club peers.....not against younger kids.

[ohmilax34]

https://twitter.com/tyxanders/status/13 ... 3455870976

I see birthdays are finally listed. Like I have said for years, lacrosse is one of the few sports where kids are rewarded for playing down. My son was always the very youngest and spent the vast majority of his soccer career playing up.... like most of the good players. No soccer or hockey coach in his right mind would be interested in a player playing down 1 or 2 years.... Yes hockey players arrive on college campuses old but they are evaluated and recruited based on play against their club peers.....not against younger kids.

Are there any college coaches that you know of that purposefully look at birthdays to see which kids are playing up (or even at their own age group) and recruiting those kids with the thought that those kids will show more improvement over 4 years in college than the kids that are a year older than their competition?

I see Truitt Sunderland is a year older than most kids in his grade. He will be 19 when he graduates HS. Of course, he's playing MIAA competition where seemingly lots of players will be 19 when they graduate HS, so he's not really playing down during his spring season.

Interesting that there is only one 2004 birthday in the top 10. This tells me that there are players not on this list who will end up being great in college once they catch up physically. This is obvious since this is only a top 10.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://twitter.com/tyxanders/status/13 ... 3455870976

I see birthdays are finally listed. Like I have said for years, lacrosse is one of the few sports where kids are rewarded for playing down. My son was always the very youngest and spent the vast majority of his soccer career playing up.... like most of the good players. No soccer or hockey coach in his right mind would be interested in a player playing down 1 or 2 years.... Yes hockey players arrive on college campuses old but they are evaluated and recruited based on play against their club peers.....not against younger kids.

Are there any college coaches that you know of that purposefully look at birthdays to see which kids are playing up (or even at their own age group) and recruiting those kids with the thought that those kids will show more improvement over 4 years in college than the kids that are a year older than their competition?

I see Truitt Sunderland is a year older than most kids in his grade. He will be 19 when he graduates HS. Of course, he's playing MIAA competition where seemingly lots of players will be 19 when they graduate HS, so he's not really playing down during his spring season.

Interesting that there is only one 2004 birthday in the top 10. This tells me that there are players not on this list who will end up being great in college once they catch up physically. This is obvious since this is only a top 10.

I am not sure if college coaches historically have paid much attention to it. If it were me, I would discount kids that are older. MIAA kids play against peers in high school but are playing down on the club circuit which is where the recruiting happens. You have kids with a 2 year advantage being recruited (in the old days) 16 year olds versus 14 year olds sometimes. Rising sophomores driving.

[ohmilax34]

https://twitter.com/tyxanders/status/13 ... 3455870976

I see birthdays are finally listed. Like I have said for years, lacrosse is one of the few sports where kids are rewarded for playing down. My son was always the very youngest and spent the vast majority of his soccer career playing up.... like most of the good players. No soccer or hockey coach in his right mind would be interested in a player playing down 1 or 2 years.... Yes hockey players arrive on college campuses old but they are evaluated and recruited based on play against their club peers.....not against younger kids.

Are there any college coaches that you know of that purposefully look at birthdays to see which kids are playing up (or even at their own age group) and recruiting those kids with the thought that those kids will show more improvement over 4 years in college than the kids that are a year older than their competition?

I see Truitt Sunderland is a year older than most kids in his grade. He will be 19 when he graduates HS. Of course, he's playing MIAA competition where seemingly lots of players will be 19 when they graduate HS, so he's not really playing down during his spring season.

Interesting that there is only one 2004 birthday in the top 10. This tells me that there are players not on this list who will end up being great in college once they catch up physically. This is obvious since this is only a top 10.

I am not sure if college coaches historically have paid much attention to it. If it were me, I would discount kids that are older. MIAA kids play against peers in high school but are playing down on the club circuit which is where the recruiting happens. You have kids with a 2 year advantage being recruited (in the old days) 16 year olds versus 14 year olds sometimes. Rising sophomores driving.

I remember reading something about John Beilein from his college coaching days that he would kind of track players' heights and see who had been under-recruited because they were short and if a kid sprouted up then he'd recruit them. However, they usually didn't jump up in the recruiting rankings because those were already kind of set and maybe the kid was still adjusting to the new 5 inches he'd just grown, as opposed to someone who was 6'7" since they were 15. Maybe I'm exaggerating it a bit, but being able to predict who will be better in a few years seems more important than who is better now and it seemed like Beilein was trying to do that.

[Matnum PI]

isn't that the essence of the coaching game? Knowing what positions you need filled and then finding the players who will be the best at these relevant positions? So if the player is an UA AA as a senior and 2 years older than every other player in HS, who cares? The question is, Will he be an NCAA 1st Team AA as a senior in college? Red-shirt him, red-shirt him again. Whatever. being 2 years older than everyone on the field obviously helps the player to have success but that success is all we're really looking at. with this said, on a personal level, i am curious how old the boys are...

[Typical Lax Dad]

isn't that the essence of the coaching game? Knowing what positions you need filled and then finding the players who will be the best at these relevant positions? So if the player is an UA AA as a senior and 2 years older than every other player in HS, who cares? The question is, Will he be an NCAA 1st Team AA as a senior in college? Red-shirt him, red-shirt him again. Whatever. being 2 years older than everyone on the field obviously helps the player to have success but that success is all we're really looking at. with this said, on a personal level, i am curious how old the boys are...

When you watch a u16 and a u15 soccer team train side by side the difference is shocking. Then take a u16 player and drop him down to U15 and he will stand out. Is he a better player? No. Just older.

[Matnum PI]

Is he a better player? No. Just older.

is he a better player? Yes. he is a better player at this moment in time. And he's also older. the question is whether the 16 year-olds will maintain this better-ness when they turn 22 and the others are 21.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Is he a better player? No. Just older.

is he a better player? Yes. he is a better player at this moment in time. And he's also older. the question is whether the 16 year-olds will maintain this better-ness when they turn 22 and the others are 21.

I disagree. He is an average player among his peers and a standout against younger players. In a competitive environment he’s average. Against lesser competition, he looks better. Kids play down for a reason in lacrosse. I don’t know anyone that wants to sign a u19 soccer player playing in a u17 competition. Also we confuse bigger stronger with better. Particularly when the other kids have not physically developed yet.

EDIT: my son’s youth team played against Pulisic. He was playing up 2 years. We didn’t have a better player. Just older. He held his own 2 years up.

[ohmilax34]

isn't that the essence of the coaching game? Knowing what positions you need filled and then finding the players who will be the best at these relevant positions? So if the player is an UA AA as a senior and 2 years older than every other player in HS, who cares? The question is, Will he be an NCAA 1st Team AA as a senior in college? Red-shirt him, red-shirt him again. Whatever. being 2 years older than everyone on the field obviously helps the player to have success but that success is all we're really looking at. with this said, on a personal level, i am curious how old the boys are...

Another way to look at it to view a player's trajectory as a curve. Where are they on their trajectory when they arrive on a college campus. Is their trajectory going up or is it pretty flat? A player who is a year older than his HS teammates probably has a flatter trajectory than others.

[Matnum PI]

A player who is a year older than his HS teammates probably has a flatter trajectory than others.

If one player is pre-pubescent while the other is post-, I'd agree. keeping in mind that pre- and post-pubescence isn't a thin line. i.e. It takes a kid some time to grow into his body. But besides this, i'm not so sure that this trajectory is so different for the two players. or, if the trajectories are so different, it doesn't correlate directly to age.

[Typical Lax Dad]

A player who is a year older than his HS teammates probably has a flatter trajectory than others.

If one player is pre-pubescent while the other is post-, I'd agree. keeping in mind that pre- and post-pubescence isn't a thin line. i.e. It takes a kid some time to grow into his body. But besides this, i'm not so sure that this trajectory is so different for the two players. or, if the trajectories are so different, it doesn't correlate directly to age.

Of course puberty is taken into consideration. Pushing the recruiting timeline back will help. Actually my son mentioned recently that a school told his club coach he wasn’t big enough to recruit. A year later the coach recruited him but that ship had sailed. The difference was a 14 year old rising sophomore and a 15 year old rising junior. Even at 14 he wasn’t “small”. Just wasn’t physically mature.

[Typical Lax Dad]

A player who is a year older than his HS teammates probably has a flatter trajectory than others.

If one player is pre-pubescent while the other is post-, I'd agree. keeping in mind that pre- and post-pubescence isn't a thin line. i.e. It takes a kid some time to grow into his body. But besides this, i'm not so sure that this trajectory is so different for the two players. or, if the trajectories are so different, it doesn't correlate directly to age.

A timely article given the recent discussion:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/290 ... =editorial

My buddy’s son made the list! A run in the NCAA tournament earned him a 3 year guaranteed contract before he pushed off to Europe.

[Matnum PI]

Peace Top 50
https://peacelacrosse.com/2020/09/04/th ... se-top-50/

[callaxdad]

Coaches basically have players from the ages of 17-21 (22 if there is a red shirt year) at the youngest or 20-25 (very rare but, if you start late and take both a PG year and red shirt or do 2 year mission before enrolling and red shirt it's possible) at the oldest or somewhere in between. I would submit coaches would prefer closer to the the latter than the former.

[ohmilax34]

Coaches basically have players from the ages of 17-21 (22 if there is a red shirt year) at the youngest or 20-25 (very rare but, if you start late and take both a PG year and red shirt or do 2 year mission before enrolling and red shirt it's possible) at the oldest or somewhere in between. I would submit coaches would prefer closer to the the latter than the former.

Yeah, this is an interesting side of this. A kid who gets held back, PGs, redshirts (maybe 2 out of 3) will be older than he otherwise would be if he hadn't done those and should be more physically mature and better able to compete in D1 lacrosse. Maybe he is more of a finished product when he gets to school. Are college coaches evaluating these case by case, or are they looking at this on a macro level? Or neither?

College hockey is weirdly like this where a year or two of junior hockey after graduating High School is common. Lately it seems the schools who recruit high end players who don't need a year or two of junior hockey have been less successful than the schools getting the older, more physically mature players. I haven't followed college hockey nearly as much as I used to, but I think this is the trend now. But what's strange is that this has always happened. I don't know why the dominant teams have moved away from BC, Michigan and Minnesota. Maybe the high end kids are going pro earlier and not sticking around school as long as they used to.

Is soccer different because it's less physical? Or maybe the point of playing in club lax and American junior hockey is about getting recruited to college where your services are used for 4 years and ends around 22-24 years old. Maybe the point of playing club soccer, at the highest level in the US, is to get a pro contract, where your services are used for a much longer period of time?

[Typical Lax Dad]

Coaches basically have players from the ages of 17-21 (22 if there is a red shirt year) at the youngest or 20-25 (very rare but, if you start late and take both a PG year and red shirt or do 2 year mission before enrolling and red shirt it's possible) at the oldest or somewhere in between. I would submit coaches would prefer closer to the the latter than the former.

Yeah, this is an interesting side of this. A kid who gets held back, PGs, redshirts (maybe 2 out of 3) will be older than he otherwise would be if he hadn't done those and should be more physically mature and better able to compete in D1 lacrosse. Maybe he is more of a finished product when he gets to school. Are college coaches evaluating these case by case, or are they looking at this on a macro level? Or neither?

College hockey is weirdly like this where a year or two of junior hockey after graduating High School is common. Lately it seems the schools who recruit high end players who don't need a year or two of junior hockey have been less successful than the schools getting the older, more physically mature players. I haven't followed college hockey nearly as much as I used to, but I think this is the trend now. But what's strange is that this has always happened. I don't know why the dominant teams have moved away from BC, Michigan and Minnesota. Maybe the high end kids are going pro earlier and not sticking around school as long as they used to.

Is soccer different because it's less physical? Or maybe the point of playing in club lax and American junior hockey is about getting recruited to college where your services are used for 4 years and ends around 22-24 years old. Maybe the point of playing club soccer, at the highest level in the US, is to get a pro contract, where your services are used for a much longer period of time?

Hockey and soccer recruiting is based on kids playing against kids their age or playing up. Not down like lacrosse. The kid being recruited out of juniors/club is based on his playing against age appropriate competition. Not playing down. The vast majority of soccer players take the college route. No college soccer coach worth his salt is recruiting kids based on HS and definitely not those playing down (there isn't such a thing). Some of the African kids that come here to play are older.... if there is that suspicion, they are discounted if still recruited.