New Hampshire was last successful under Sandy Bridgman. The Sarah Albrecht era resulted in a trough out of which UNH may never return. Abysmal recruiting, taciturn coaching, no outreach to the community. But they got the NU coaching tree compulsory shorts. Sad tidings all around.NutmegCrunch wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 6:20 pm1) Oh, don't let the Laxachusetts or Gold Coast parents hear you say that, LOL.WashedUpLaxDad wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:20 pm 1) Outside of Mass Elite and Grizzlies, girls club lax in the NE is pretty poor. And the best girls from those programs often want to go to top national schools.
2) A majority of Mass Elite players are prep school kids whose home is coast to coast so they don't necesarily have any affinity to the northeast
3) Lots of the prep school kids and Darien/New Canann kids are from families who are super focused on education. Often will choose NESCAC if they don't get offers from Ivies or high academic D1 (Duke/Stanford)
2) Accurate - we know prep school girls from all over the country and many of them don't feel strong ties to New England.
3) Fair point, but I think another side of the coin is that players from Fairfield County and the prep schools are the ones whose parents went to NESCACs/Ivies themselves and can generally afford to pay full freight at those kinds of schools.
Looking at rosters for UConn, UMass, UVM, and UNH, most players are from the Northeast. There are a few prep school grads but most players are graduates of public or parochial high schools. I can see a New England flagship being appealing to a decent player who's a good student but isn't getting recruiting attention from the big name schools, and whose parents make too much for need-based aid but not enough be able to drop $90K+ per year to send their kid to Tufts or Dartmouth. They likely don't care so much that the red carpet isn't being rolled out by the school, because they're just not being pursued by the schools that can afford to roll out the red carpet.
Getting back to games! Speaking of two of those New England flagships, UConn finally has a win, 17-5 over UNH. I feel like New Hampshire was more successful under their previous HC.
Penn State coach has to be thinking about a career in insurance, maybe project management.