Has lacrosse “bubble” started to pop??

[HooDat]

No one said there weren't good/great lacrosse players. An "all-star team" from today could probably beat an "all-time All-Star" team with no problem. Today's players are better athletes and have received far more coaching at a much more technical level.

That is different than the growth of the sport. And from my vantage point, rec lacrosse has stopped growing. And rec lacrosse is the early indicator.

I don't have a huge problem with a lack of growth. I just don't like the sacrifice the game of lacrosse has made so a couple dozen of guys can make six-figures off the game at the expense of rec league play.

[Wheels]

No one said there weren't good/great lacrosse players. An "all-star team" from today could probably beat an "all-time All-Star" team with no problem. Today's players are better athletes and have received far more coaching at a much more technical level.

That is different than the growth of the sport. And from my vantage point, rec lacrosse has stopped growing. And rec lacrosse is the early indicator.

I don't have a huge problem with a lack of growth. I just don't like the sacrifice the game of lacrosse has made so a couple dozen of guys can make six-figures off the game at the expense of rec league play.

Some of the stuff that's happening with rec is just awful. I coached a rec team this past spring. A coach at a younger age group told me that he only wanted to coach rec to recruit for the club team he coached and that his goal for next year was to have that entire club team ditch rec. That's just bad all around. The kids on the club team don't often receive good coaching (this guy's club team sits in a zone on defense...there should be a rule outlawing zones U12 and younger). And there's a community a piece to this that goes away when rec goes away.

[wgdsr]

ya, don't have any problem if the sport's not "growing". decades ago, it was pretty cool to be able to see new areas get it. new schools in established areas. more young kids being able to play before high school.
it certainly would be cool if the crawl kept happening to places that have no other option than baseball and t&f in the spring. wyoming, arizona, mississippi, south carolina, north dakota, oklahoma.

now that we are here --- and on many local levels, given what it has turned into, i'm more than ok with it not "growing" in an established area. but it will be contracting, if it's not already, in an area near you.

https://www.uslacrosse.org/about-us-lac ... ion-survey

there are some participation reports up to 2017. sport grew that final year, but only if you count 0.1% as growing.
first overall downtick, maybe ever, from 2016-17, in youth participation. if you separate out the girls, youth boys was down over 3 %, from 292k+ to 283k+. do i expect something similar when we see 2018 and 2019? i do. that's with newer areas growing, adding high schools, new rec youth leagues in non-hotbeds, etc.

at a pretty long-term, successful high school for lacrosse, had 3 freshmen come in for 2018-19 school year.

in the swath of our metro area, i wouldn't be surprised if the 5,000+ # of players is down 50% in the rec league over the last 2-3 years, based on the now number of teams. although there are too many get-your-d1-scholly-here club travel teams in the area, they don't make a dent in that number.

people used to say this was a sport for the rich preppies. we're either coming full-circle or not much has changed. bring your wallet, or find another ball. or maybe the xbox machine is just cheaper than all of them, after all,

[River Donkey]

No one said there weren't good/great lacrosse players. An "all-star team" from today could probably beat an "all-time All-Star" team with no problem. Today's players are better athletes and have received far more coaching at a much more technical level.

That is different than the growth of the sport. And from my vantage point, rec lacrosse has stopped growing. And rec lacrosse is the early indicator.

I don't have a huge problem with a lack of growth. I just don't like the sacrifice the game of lacrosse has made so a couple dozen of guys can make six-figures off the game at the expense of rec league play.

[River Donkey]

ya, don't have any problem if the sport's not "growing". decades ago, it was pretty cool to be able to see new areas get it. new schools in established areas. more young kids being able to play before high school.
it certainly would be cool if the crawl kept happening to places that have no other option than baseball and t&f in the spring. wyoming, arizona, mississippi, south carolina, north dakota, oklahoma.

now that we are here --- and on many local levels, given what it has turned into, i'm more than ok with it not "growing" in an established area. but it will be contracting, if it's not already, in an area near you.

https://www.uslacrosse.org/about-us-lac ... ion-survey

there are some participation reports up to 2017. sport grew that final year, but only if you count 0.1% as growing.
first overall downtick, maybe ever, from 2016-17, in youth participation. if you separate out the girls, youth boys was down over 3 %, from 292k+ to 283k+. do i expect something similar when we see 2018 and 2019? i do. that's with newer areas growing, adding high schools, new rec youth leagues in non-hotbeds, etc.

at a pretty long-term, successful high school for lacrosse, had 3 freshmen come in for 2018-19 school year.

in the swath of our metro area, i wouldn't be surprised if the 5,000+ # of players is down 50% in the rec league over the last 2-3 years, based on the now number of teams. although there are too many get-your-d1-scholly-here club travel teams in the area, they don't make a dent in that number.

people used to say this was a sport for the rich preppies. we're either coming full-circle or not much has changed. bring your wallet, or find another ball. or maybe the xbox machine is just cheaper than all of them, after all,

[pcowlax]

In CT now we dream of Rowland compared to the unfathomable idiocy of the past two. All of the posts about CT other than Primetime, obviously, were sarcastic mocking of his ridiculous description of CT as a blasted wasteland due to a few hedge funds leaving. And no, something I posted which seemed to launched much of this furor was that the CSU coach leaving, or CSU folding lax or CSU lax thriving, none of these have any bearing on the future trajectory of lax as a sport. Cleveland St. for gods sake is not the canary. Declining participation in more recent expansion regions due to the cost and time commitment of clubs certainly could be. I will say however that soccer has survived decades of escalating club costs, weekly summer tournaments and, vastly more threatening than anything in lax, full shifting of top players out of even the clubs and to year round ODP and they are still doing OK. Plenty to criticize about clubs but they need not spell the end of lacrosse.

On the men's side? gotta be kidding me. Has the mens national team ever scored a goal in regulation time? Didn't even make it into the World Cup. pathetic. Guess all those club players are good

Uh, guess we are talking about two different things. Youth men’s soccer in US doing great, as is women’s. Men’s adult has to play the 190 countries in the world where men’s soccer is their sports life. Outside of 5-10 countries, 0 nations give a crap about women’s soccers. FYI there is no high school or youth club women’s soccer in Chile. To put things in perspective, and yes, I will send you the links, in preparation for this World Cup cycle the US women’s national team lost to a 15 year old boys academy team. This was as good a 15 year old team as there is in the US but, yeah. Australia, who has a very solid women’s team lost 7-0 to a 15 year old boys team before the last World Cup. Any decent college team beats them 6-0, the men’s teams beats them 35-0. So, yeah, you know nothing about soccer or the idea of there being a world sport, because there is. US lax has to beat Canada and...........

[Typical Lax Dad]

In CT now we dream of Rowland compared to the unfathomable idiocy of the past two. All of the posts about CT other than Primetime, obviously, were sarcastic mocking of his ridiculous description of CT as a blasted wasteland due to a few hedge funds leaving. And no, something I posted which seemed to launched much of this furor was that the CSU coach leaving, or CSU folding lax or CSU lax thriving, none of these have any bearing on the future trajectory of lax as a sport. Cleveland St. for gods sake is not the canary. Declining participation in more recent expansion regions due to the cost and time commitment of clubs certainly could be. I will say however that soccer has survived decades of escalating club costs, weekly summer tournaments and, vastly more threatening than anything in lax, full shifting of top players out of even the clubs and to year round ODP and they are still doing OK. Plenty to criticize about clubs but they need not spell the end of lacrosse.

On the men's side? gotta be kidding me. Has the mens national team ever scored a goal in regulation time? Didn't even make it into the World Cup. pathetic. Guess all those club players are good

Uh, guess we are talking about two different things. Youth men’s soccer in US doing great, as is women’s. Men’s adult has to play the 190 countries in the world where men’s soccer is their sports life. Outside of 5-10 countries, 0 nations give a dump about women’s soccers. FYI there is no high school or youth club women’s soccer in Chile. To put things in perspective, and yes, I will send you the links, in preparation for this World Cup cycle the US women’s national team lost to a 15 year old boys academy team. This was as good a 15 year old team as there is in the US but, yeah. Australia, who has a very solid women’s team lost 7-0 to a 15 year old boys team before the last World Cup. Any decent college team beats them 6-0, the men’s teams beats them 35-0. So, yeah, you know nothing about soccer or the idea of there being a world sport, because there is. US lax has to beat Canada and...........

That wasn’t a friendly against FC Dallas....

[pcowlax]

Friendly, hostile, call it what you will. When the US national men’s team loses to 15 year old girls, come back about the sexist disparity in how these teams are treated. Not sure how we got here on the lax page but on any sport, your salary is predicated on your revenue generation. That’s that. You make money, you earn money. The last men’s World Cup took in 6 billion, this women’s took in 130 million, by percentage of revenue, the women earned about 20% to the men’s 6%, please pay some attention to reality.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Friendly, hostile, call it what you will. When the US national men’s team loses to 15 year old girls, come back about the sexist disparity in how these teams are treated. Not sure how we got here on the lax page but on any sport, your salary is predicated on your revenue generation. That’s that. You make money, you earn money. The last men’s World Cup took in 6 billion, this women’s took in 130 million, by percentage of revenue, the women earned about 20% to the men’s 6%, please pay some attention to reality.

It wasn't a game was made only point. I think the USA women would struggle with a u16 team and stands no chance against a high level U17 team. What about non WC years? The men stink. That's reality. The rest of the world is gaining ground on the women....that is also reality.

[Homer]

Friendly, hostile, call it what you will. When the US national men’s team loses to 15 year old girls, come back about the sexist disparity in how these teams are treated. Not sure how we got here on the lax page but on any sport, your salary is predicated on your revenue generation. That’s that. You make money, you earn money. The last men’s World Cup took in 6 billion, this women’s took in 130 million, by percentage of revenue, the women earned about 20% to the men’s 6%, please pay some attention to reality.

I don't read the water cooler/politics stuff, but at least in terms of the actual lacrosse boards, this is easily the weirdest thread in the thus far short history of Fan Lax.

I might be missing some of the layers of double-secret ironic innuendo, but the way I read ABV's original post was that whatever's going on with soccer in this country at youth level, it hasn't produced a demonstrably better men's national team than what we had in 2002 -- quite the contrary. Of course the men have a wholly different competitive situation to deal with as opposed to the women's team, but I didn't take the post to be about that. I thought it was about whether the shift to club & academy vs. rec & HS play had positively or negatively affected talent identification and development. The claim was that it certainly hasn't helped, which seems right to me.

[Homer]

Vote on what you'd like this thread to have more of!

-- Hilarious inside jokes about Fairfield County.

-- Weirdly contentious arguments about youth soccer.

-- Fattylax college campus architectural reviews.

-- Anything related to the sport of lacrosse.

[Wheels]

Vote on what you'd like this thread to have more of!

-- Hilarious inside jokes about Fairfield County.

There is only one choice here.

Fight me if you think otherwise. I'll be at the Sea Grape on Reef Rd.

[wgdsr]

i actually like any of the first 3..
this is the only thread consistently running right now.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Vote on what you'd like this thread to have more of!

-- Hilarious inside jokes about Fairfield County.

There is only one choice here.

Fight me if you think otherwise. I'll be at the Sea Grape on Reef Rd.

The thugs at the Horseshoe will meet you there!

[PrimeTime21]

Vote on what you'd like this thread to have more of!

-- Hilarious inside jokes about Fairfield County.

There is only one choice here.

Fight me if you think otherwise. I'll be at the Sea Grape on Reef Rd.

The Grape is a very strong choice on a summer Saturday

[ABV 8.3%]

Friendly, hostile, call it what you will. When the US national men’s team loses to 15 year old girls, come back about the sexist disparity in how these teams are treated. Not sure how we got here on the lax page but on any sport, your salary is predicated on your revenue generation. That’s that. You make money, you earn money. The last men’s World Cup took in 6 billion, this women’s took in 130 million, by percentage of revenue, the women earned about 20% to the men’s 6%, please pay some attention to reality.

I don't read the water cooler/politics stuff, but at least in terms of the actual lacrosse boards, this is easily the weirdest thread in the thus far short history of Fan Lax.

I might be missing some of the layers of double-secret ironic innuendo, but the way I read ABV's original post was that whatever's going on with soccer in this country at youth level, it hasn't produced a demonstrably better men's national team than what we had in 2002 -- quite the contrary. Of course the men have a wholly different competitive situation to deal with as opposed to the women's team, but I didn't take the post to be about that. I thought it was about whether the shift to club & academy vs. rec & HS play had positively or negatively affected talent identification and development. The claim was that it certainly hasn't helped, which seems right to me.

Thank you Homer, this is precisely what I meant. (Terp-Taylor Twellman rant, insert here)

Others wanting To compare females to males is, to be frank, asinine. (When it comes to sports )

[pcowlax]

As for me, I never intended to say, and didn’t say, that the club model had greatly improved our national men’s team, relative to the top ~35 teams they still suck (though they would pound the team from 20 years ago). In the context of talking about a lax bubble bursting I was just saying that while there are many things to lament about the way club is run, soccer moves from rec teams to travel teams to club teams to ODP and it has not ruined their participation level. It can be done. Having a large club scene need not destroy youth lacrosse. Sea Grape is great for a drink, if I’m eating outside on the water I’ll take The Whelk

[ABV 8.3%]

As for me, I never intended to say, and didn’t say, that the club model had greatly improved our national men’s team, relative to the top ~35 teams they still suck (though they would pound the team from 20 years ago). In the context of talking about a lax bubble bursting I was just saying that while there are many things to lament about the way club is run, soccer moves from rec teams to travel teams to club teams to ODP and it has not ruined their participation level. It can be done. Having a large club scene need not destroy youth lacrosse. Sea Grape is great for a drink, if I’m eating outside on the water I’ll take The Whelk

Come back to us and chime in when a immigrant of little economic means, makes the US mens soccer team. Illegal or not. I mean a rostered US team member that never attended college. French have..........

As for horrible places to go eat and drink, the Sea Grape fits that description to a T. In today's beer world, you can't come up with a lamer beer list than the Fuzzy Salty Sea Grape has. The Whelk is WAY better, agree with pcowlax

[pcowlax]

What in the hell are you talking about? Maybe dial down the ABV.

[ABV 8.3%]

What in the hell are you talking about? Maybe dial down the ABV.

I am saying that the pay to play system in the USA, perhaps it's not a successful model ? Results matter ? (Soccer )

Personally, the day US lacrosse voted to support cross checking for 7 year olds, coached by adults with even less hours of lacrosse experience than the ages of the kids they are coaching, put a big hurdle in growth.