New England West 2025

[Can Opener]

How about the new model that is emerging:

Re-class at a prep school (ISL or NEWest) and then do a PG year on top of it.

You don’t have to look very far to see that this is the new trend for parents who are seeking to put a Virgina Lacrosse sticker on their Rover.

If you have a problem with this system, I really wouldn’t shame the players and families. They are playing by the rules. Your gripe should be more with the boarding school or NCAA rules committees if you want to impose an age restriction. The NEPSAC says that: “individual athletes who are 19 years old, or younger, on September 1 of each school year are eligible to participate in NEPSAC competition.” That would in fact allow for a double repeat kid as you mention. (Although in my experience, those cases are rare.) The older private school athletes are not competing against 200-person public high schools with no reclasses. They are competing against other teams who have agreed to the same rules. A victimless crime.

As for the insinuations of your Range Rover comment, the top NEPSAC lacrosse programs that allow PGs have some of the most generous financial aid programs on the planet. This opportunity is open to a great many players who want to chase their dream of playing college lacrosse at a high level. This is not the choice I would make for my kid, but we could each list 25 reasons why this may be a logical fit for others: injury setback, academic enhancement, SAT improvement, family illnesses/circumstances, emotional maturation, physical maturation, etc.

If you are really concerned with the financial ramifications, I would suggest a gap year rather than a PG year. I am not sure why more kids don’t do this. You can get a job and add to the college fund rather than subtracting from it. You can grind on workouts and get more lax reps than you would at a boarding school. Take some cheap classes at a local college or online to stay sharp. Or, God forbid, read a bunch of books. This year Taft played its first game on March 22 and its last game on May 22. It seems pretty silly to spend $75,000 ($1,250/day of lax) if you are really just biding time until playing in college.

My guess is that your real issue here is that it seems unfair for a kid who is 12-24 months older than another kid to be competing for the same college offer. I get that. If you really care that much, do a gap year. And also please bear in mind that college coaches are not blind to this issue. The top programs are recruiting kids who just finished their sophomore year and they are trying to project how they will perform six years in the future. They know that the 19-year-old is further along the development curve than the 17-year-old who has more growth upside.

You can’t blame the coaches – whose careers can end from one dumb teenager’s Saturday night decision – for wanting a freshman who is more mature. The academic literature suggests that boys in their late teens are on average about a year behind in development from girls. An extra year of seasoning in every sense lowers the academic and misconduct risk for college coaches. That would seem to be a win for everyone. There is some interesting work on this subject from Richard Reeves, PhD, who suggests a red shirt year early in elementary school should be the norm and not the exception for boys.
https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/why ... t-the-boys

[MA Lax Fan]

I don’t think I’m shaming any families with a 19.5 senior. I’m sure they could care less what an anonymous account on a message board is saying.

The double reclass is happening more and more. Kids from NEWest and the ISL are now PG’ing - it is no longer “rare”.

I won’t call them out by name but just look at the PG list for this Spring - it’s obvious.

The reason I hate it, is simple. It destroys the sport of lacrosse.

For the past 20 years, lacrosse was booming, both in the middle class communities and also non hotbed states.

This momentum has recently come to a screeching halt as clubs and the prep schools have driven the sport back into the upper income bracket families.

Now to play high level lax, you have to pay $70,000 a year, reclass, and another $10,000 for 3D. (The insane equipment costs don’t help either).

I just hate to see the sport I love be in the same sphere as water polo & fencing.

And I’m a NEWest alum.

[Laxxal22]

Assuming the NEPSAC age rules Can Opener shared are followed, I still think double reclass students are rare simply because the realistic window for birthdates for those who'd be eligible to stay back two times is only about six weeks out of the year.

To not be 19 before 9/1 of the PG year means if a kid had stayed in his original class he would not yet have turned 17 before the start of his senior year. Some boys with a September or early October birthday may begin their schooling on a track that gets them to senior year at 16, but it's a small percentage and they're among/perhaps the youngest in their class in those early grades. So the pool of players who could reclass and then PG is small, and the original reclass more to gets them with kids their own age than a big advantage.

That's not to say there aren't 19.5 year olds by springtime across all NEPSAC leagues, there are, and you're definitely more of a young man than a boy at that point if you've done consistent athletic training. That maturation is part of why prep and public school lacrosse are apples and oranges, but as pointed out, they don't really compete other than some scrimmages and a few legacy games like Darien-Brunswick.

As to it all destroying the sport of lacrosse, it's more symptom than cause imo. There's such focus on finding a kid's marketable niche these days, which leads those who show promise in lacrosse early on to hyper-fixate on it (AA club, reclass, etc.), and others who are just solid to pretty good as 6th/7th graders drop the sport to keep searching for the next thing that could be their "thing". Specialization ends up a double-edged sword that cuts a public school program twice with top level players leaving and some mid level players who perhaps could've developed into very good high school players no longer playing.

[Can Opener]

I don’t think I’m shaming any families with a 19.5 senior. I’m sure they could care less what an anonymous account on a message board is saying.

The double reclass is happening more and more. Kids from NEWest and the ISL are now PG’ing - it is no longer “rare”.

I won’t call them out by name but just look at the PG list for this Spring - it’s obvious.

The reason I hate it, is simple. It destroys the sport of lacrosse.

For the past 20 years, lacrosse was booming, both in the middle class communities and also non hotbed states.

This momentum has recently come to a screeching halt as clubs and the prep schools have driven the sport back into the upper income bracket families.

Now to play high level lax, you have to pay $70,000 a year, reclass, and another $10,000 for 3D. (The insane equipment costs don’t help either).

I just hate to see the sport I love be in the same sphere as water polo & fencing.

And I’m a NEWest alum.

I share many of your concerns over the future of lacrosse, but double reclassing is not destroying the sport. It has a tiny impact on growing lacrosse. At the local levels, we all need to emphasize to kids that there is a fun path to a rewarding high school lacrosse career that doesn’t require reclassing, an elite private club or a massive private school tuition. You can still be a seasonal lacrosse player and win a starting role on your local high school team. Heck, the rosters of most ISL, NEWest, Founder’s League and Lakes Region teams have starters who pick up a stick in early March and put it away at the end of May. These public HS and private school seasonal players won’t win a D1 scholarship, but many of them will go on to a fun D3 college experience. We need to do a better job messaging to these types of kids that just because your buddy posted his D1 commitment on Instagram after reclassing, playing year round on a club team, and getting additional private coaching, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a blast playing this sport for a long time.

Even if you want to reach the highest levels of the sport, that door is open without a huge financial expenditure. I took a quick look at the 2021 UVA roster when they won the national championship. Of the 48 players on the roster, 20 came from public high schools and another 6 came from Catholic schools. (St. Anthony’s and Chaminade both have tuition below $20K – not chump change but also not $70K.) Of the 22 kids who went to an expensive prep school, the large majority attended a day school in or near their hometown. It is hard to imagine that double repeats had any impact whatsoever on the best college team in the nation in 2021. That means the path to the absolute pinnacle of the sport does not require five or six years of $70K tuition. Does it help to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and extra time in HS for some kids? Of course. But that doesn’t close the door for the majority of other athletes who don’t choose that path.

As for how often double reclassing even occurs, you mentioned that it is obvious from looking at the list JustAnotherPerson compiled. There are 5 players doing a PG year who are coming from an ISL or another NEWest program. Of those, 2 have their age listed on IL and they are both 18 this fall, turning 19 during the ‘25 season – single reclass kids. Even if the other 3 are double reclasses (I haven’t seen any evidence of this), that is not a phenomenon that is going to destroy the sport. It may feel a little more prevalent here in New England because we are home to the majority of schools that have a vibrant lacrosse PG program.

I sincerely share your concerns over keeping the sport accessible to middle class kids, but respectfully, double reclassing is very low on the list of hurdles to overcome.

[Can Opener]

As to it all destroying the sport of lacrosse, it's more symptom than cause imo. There's such focus on finding a kid's marketable niche these days, which leads those who show promise in lacrosse early on to hyper-fixate on it (AA club, reclass, etc.), and others who are just solid to pretty good as 6th/7th graders drop the sport to keep searching for the next thing that could be their "thing". Specialization ends up a double-edged sword that cuts a public school program twice with top level players leaving and some mid level players who perhaps could've developed into very good high school players no longer playing.

Our posts crossed. This point is spot on regarding the double whammy effect on public high schools. It is particularly true in Eastern Mass. where we have the country's highest concentration of excellent private secondary schools within a one-hour radius of the lacrosse population.

[Laxxal22]

Many areas have more kids migrating to private schools than they did 15 years ago, with lacrosse and often a reclass factored into the decision more than ever before.

But Greater Boston/Eastern Mass may be the perfect storm for the current phenomenon, with the 16 ISL and schools and other NEPSACs (Andover, Dexter, Pingree, etc.) plus a handful of huge Catholic schools as local day and boarding options, as well as both West 1 and Lakes Region schools for boarding within 1.5-2.5ish hours away and very doable for parents on weekends and not crazy for a few midweek games for those with the necessary flexibility.

There's a fit for every type of kid not too far away, and currently many of those schools are interested in bringing in 4-8 good to great lacrosse players per class. With a network of club teams and prep-focused showcases and events helping facilitate the process, the pipeline of talent to private schools in MA is very well lubricated at the moment.