Has lacrosse “bubble” started to pop??

[co2519]

Per Wheels very insightful post, did they release the total # of high school boys in CO? Any drop in lax numbers here in CT is useless to analyze without taking into account the total falling population. Of course if the total population of high school boys drops and the lax numbers drop you can say that is lax numbers dropping, and of course it is, but that is different than saying the percentage of high schoolers playing lax is dropping because of clubs.

I don't have total boys population handy, but I'm quite certain it has gone up, not down. The metro Denver area alone has seen annual population increases of over 50,000 per year, for the last 10 yrs....

[HooDat]

but they took enough of them, that their buddies (who either couldn't make the club teams yet, or could no longer play with their skilled friends in rec) --- bailed, sooner or later. no longer could get better thru osmosis. the whole construct of getting better together, year to year, evaporated.

yep, yep, yep!

The metro Denver area alone has seen annual population increases of over 50,000 per year, for the last 10 yrs....

and down in the Texas major metropolitan areas (Dallas, Houston, Austin) are all growing.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Yes, exactly, that is my point. I have extreme familiarity with the course of youth soccer over the past 35 year. It went from a sport no one outside of small niches had ever heard of to a very popular youth sport by the early 80s. At that point it was just town rec leagues, ala the halcyon days of lax everyone is referencing on here. It then moved to town travel teams, where after several years of rec the best players in the town would form a team that played against other towns, while rec still carried on for others. In the early 90s clubs really started to come up, which were geographic, in my small state of CT there were 3-4 top clubs splitting kids across the state mostly based on where they lived. This continued for a number of years before clubs expanded their reach, kids would “be on” a club in CT (Oakwood) or PA (Delco) and live in Ohio and just fly in to play in tournaments. This was the rule ( flying was of course not the norm but driving long distances obliterated the previous geographic basis) until the last 5-6 years when ODP completely took over. There are still the clubs but many of the very best are just locked into ODP from early years and the wondrous regionals tourney is lessened for it. AND YET, youth participation remains sky high. This is what I have been trying to say. There are MANY problems with club lax! But just having an emphasis on clubs, or an aggressive selecting out of top players, does not mean your sport needs to crash, or that your youth participation needs to crash, or that kids who are not joining top clubs at age 8 need to stop playing the sport.

The fundamental nature of the two games is so different that you can't compare them. Soccer can be played in some semblance of its intended form by kids who have never touched a soccer ball before. Lacrosse is NOT the same thing. There is a base skill level that at least some players must have to play it. You pull those kids out and the game of lacrosse is no longer fun past the very, very early stages.

More importantly, there have been enough rec league soccer kids to keep the rec leagues full for the kids who don't want to travel. From the 70's to today, I have yet to see soccer rec leagues suffer for participation.

add to that,
the rise of club soccer was in response to demand based on volume.
the rise of club lacrosse was based on the demand created through manufactured fear, and preying upon parent's belief that they could use money and an edge to get their kids an advantage.

what hoo dat says here is spot on.
less than ten years ago, our youth system fed 10-11 high schools. there were 3 major "towns", and the majority of the players came from one town who administered and marketed the program.
forced a split so our town (3 high schools) would have our own organization, and what had been 80 boys over 8 grades for years became over 250 within several years. in the last 3+ years, that ~250 and 14 teams over 8 grades has dropped to 90 and 5 teams. again, to feed 3 high schools.
not coincidentally the local clubs, following baltimore's lead to make it a 365 day payday --- went to spring (and an abolishment of playing rec @ the same time) -- after first bleeding from summer to fall, to winter workouts and box.
our town did not fill the pockets to the tune of 160 players to these clubs. or even close. but they took enough of them, that their buddies (who either couldn't make the club teams yet, or could no longer play with their skilled friends in rec) --- bailed, sooner or later. no longer could get better thru osmosis. the whole construct of getting better together, year to year, evaporated.
taking out 10-15 kids, out of 4 teams at a bi-annual age group -- takes out a lot more of them.
if you have 6-8 teams per year in soccer (which is what our town rec league has, in the spring and the fall), where everyone can still play at a "base" level and it's still a similar game, kids can get better... losing even 10+ kids per grade doesn't matter in the impact of their willingness and incentive to play.

this was not a very difficult thing to predict. i've had this conversation and prognostication with people since before the mention of spring club leagues was even broached. many other people have as well. the numbers will be dropping substantially over the next 5 years in my opinion. us lacrosse will be in crisis management mode, shocked that they couldn't see it coming, and citing other sports as this being inevitable. they helped bag the pooch all along. high school teams will drop jv (they have already), then it will be dropped as a varsity sport at many places. not if, but when.

p.s. our schools' populations are growing annually, and have averaged over 1 new hs per year in the county to accommodate for over a decade.

When the better soccer players bailed earlier for club, the same thing happened....Solid players decided not to play or moved on to other sports. The pressure on families has also limited the pool. You have 12-13 year olds traveling 6-7 hours to play a “league game”.

[pcowlax]

I debet latine loqui

[Typical Lax Dad]

I debet latine loqui

Yo no hablo

[pcowlax]

Apparently no hablamos, or should I have said

[Typical Lax Dad]

Apparently no nosotran hablan.

I know. I jumped around in my posts. Have a good one. You actually have a good perspective on soccer and lacrosse in CT. Better than most.

[Fanlax999]

You’re all missing it.

I’m gonna talk for CT now. People are going broke all over the place. Greenwich is a financial bloodbath and anything further east is a burned out corpse.

The lacrosse “core markets” and “hotbeds” are hurting economically right now.

The youth lacrosse trade is horrendous. 1k on gear, 2k a year on club, 15 to 65k a year on private school. And what Is the light at the end of the tunnel? A quarter scholly to like Furman and a “hookup” to some buyside sweatshop? Or full pay at a miserable ivy where he is out of place and not finding smashable biddies?

If a kid is a good athlete, lacrosse is the worst possible outlet for him. On the plus side he will fee like the man in his suburban private school. As the northeast recedes in national importance and financial strength our game is s.o.l.

And dont get me started on “growth markets.” In TX and FL lax is for losers. Like the magic club or marching band. We’re banking on the white neighborhoods of Baltimore, Long Island, Westchester/Fairfield County and Bethesda to carry our game. It’s looking grim.

LOL!.....according to some folks on this board, lax is "exploding". At least somebody here is realistic and not pushing the hype and an agenda.

[Fanlax999]

The growth of the women's game outpaces the men's game. With the Pac12 sponsoring lacrosse and having 6 programs (plus SDSU, Fresno, and UCD having programs), the women's game is legitimately a national game. On that side of the docket, the growth is real and universities continue to add programs.

Having a son in the youth club scene right now, I can tell you that it sure looks like the game is growing. If parents can afford to send U12 and younger kids to the east coast for multiple tournaments from CO, TX, GA, CA, FL, those parents would fit well in Roland Park, Bethesda, Fairfield County, and the like. Overall, those "emerging markets" do matter. 330M people in the US is a lot of people. 20 new players per age group in Birmingham, AL or Tulsa, OK or Wherever Else, USA adds up. Combined all of those emerging markets might not produce as many lacrosse players as you get on the north shore of Suffolk County, but that still ends up being a lot of new players.

Also, never underestimate the power of people loving to say to their friends, "my son is on scholarship at University X." Even if that's a books-only scholarship, your average friend has no clue that lacrosse provides partial scholarships.

Look no further than the Full House admissions scandal. People love to brag. Schools are status symbols for some people. Having a kid on scholarship is a status symbol for some people. Telling your friends that your kid plays a sport in college, even at the D3 level, is an ego thing for some people.

Of course, we're long overdue for a recession in this country, so who knows what will happen when one eventually comes.

I know a lot of parents/kids caught up in the "My kid/I am going to xxx D1/D2?D3 school on a scholie" ego trip...but give it one year and almost ALL of them come running back home because sitting on left bench in 10 degrees F ain't no fun and being 1000's of miles away from CA, TX, OR, etc. weather. I wish I could list all the kids who quit college lax to play MCLA or quit all together after their first year back east (or Utah, Mesa St, etc., etc.). They all finally wake up after getting slapped in the face with the hard reality of not being good enough to play college lacrosse, and for falling for the con job of being told they were great players and should get on the recruiting train. LOL. suckers.

[Fanlax999]

Like I have written many times before on this board and others, greed and egos has and will kill this sport so that only the very wealthy and committed will be playing this sport. travel team and lax tourney owners (sometimes they are the same person/people) just need enough players to field a couple of teams in each age group so that they can milk them for all they are worth. they know the parents who are left are wealthy enough and desperate enough to pay whatever bill they are given. they will fly to whatever state to play pick up games, or what they call "recruiting" trips. pay whatever travel costs there are. do whatever it takes to get johnny/janie on the "all-star" team so they can get their name in the recruiting write-ups and get talked about by ty z. lol. just like that scummy dude taking "fees" for getting kids in to elite colleges, the travel team owners are doing the same thing with selling "the dream" of "making it" to d1/d2/d3 lax or getting into a "prestigious" college.

a little off topic, but many players we know who got into the ivies supposedly via lax actually have parents who went to that same ivy. everyone knows johnny/janie is a legacy and got in because daddy/mommy is a big alumni donor or member of a board or something. or they have relatives already at the school and that was their in. just google player last names and/or their daddy's name and put the money trail together.

regarding the comment about cabell maddux in an earlier post, and his past dirty deeds which everyone knows about so I am not slandering him with this post, i found that families and players will look past a coach's ugly reputation and past as long as they can play with other super talented players. every player wants to play with top flight players, no matter what. even if it has to be tied to someone like maddux or other slimey characters whom they would normally NOT associate themsevles with if it were any other social event outside of lax. I had to stomach being around low charcter coaches and team owners for the sake of my son to be on certain teams. thank god my son came to realize what kind of people he was dealing with and the level of integrity he had to compromise to achieve his "dream" of playing college lax. some people never get it. some have drank so much kool-aid and are so far into denial that they can't even admit the truth that is right in front of them. these are the kind of families the lax team owners are looking for and banking on. sad.

[44WeWantMore]

Like I have written many times before on this board and others, greed and egos has and will kill this sport so that only the very wealthy and committed will be playing this sport. travel team and lax tourney owners (sometimes they are the same person/people) just need enough players to field a couple of teams in each age group so that they can milk them for all they are worth. they know the parents who are left are wealthy enough and desperate enough to pay whatever bill they are given. they will fly to whatever state to play pick up games, or what they call "recruiting" trips. pay whatever travel costs there are. do whatever it takes to get johnny/janie on the "all-star" team so they can get their name in the recruiting write-ups and get talked about by ty z. lol. just like that scummy dude taking "fees" for getting kids in to elite colleges, the travel team owners are doing the same thing with selling "the dream" of "making it" to d1/d2/d3 lax or getting into a "prestigious" college.

a little off topic, but many players we know who got into the ivies supposedly via lax actually have parents who went to that same ivy. everyone knows johnny/janie is a legacy and got in because daddy/mommy is a big alumni donor or member of a board or something. or they have relatives already at the school and that was their in. just google player last names and/or their daddy's name and put the money trail together.

regarding the comment about cabell maddux in an earlier post, and his past dirty deeds which everyone knows about so I am not slandering him with this post, i found that families and players will look past a coach's ugly reputation and past as long as they can play with other super talented players. every player wants to play with top flight players, no matter what. even if it has to be tied to someone like maddux or other slimey characters whom they would normally NOT associate themsevles with if it were any other social event outside of lax. I had to stomach being around low charcter coaches and team owners for the sake of my son to be on certain teams. thank god my son came to realize what kind of people he was dealing with and the level of integrity he had to compromise to achieve his "dream" of playing college lax. some people never get it. some have drank so much kool-aid and are so far into denial that they can't even admit the truth that is right in front of them. these are the kind of families the lax team owners are looking for and banking on. sad.

Everybody may know it, but that does not make it true:

First a couple of anecdotes. On the JHU thread (maybe it was LP), a frequent poster noted a friend of his was a regular, large donor, which I interpreted as at least 5 figures annually, with the promise of 6 some day, and maybe 7 in his will. His qualified child did not get in to JHU. Closer to home, a relative of mine had done spectacularly well, and was looking a trying to get his son into his highly-selective, but non-Ivy alma mater. He found, that, while his son was qualified (say 50-75 percentile), it took 7 figures just to move the needle, but for something resembling a lock, he had to put his name on a building. If those anecdotes are for non-Ivys, I find it difficult to believe that ordinary, generous, alumni giving has any impact at all on Ivy admissions.

And for data, which shows, while their admit rate is higher, legacies are generally more qualified than non-legacies:

Code: Select all

		No Legacy	Primary Legacy	Secondary Legacy
Mean SAT Critical Reading	679	699	684
Mean SAT Mathematics		685	694	689
Admit Rate (total)		20.5%	43.7%	31.4%
Admit Rate (early decision)	39.0%	56.8%	51.5%

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissio ... applicants

[xxxxxxx]

Like I have written many times before on this board and others, greed and egos has and will kill this sport so that only the very wealthy and committed will be playing this sport. travel team and lax tourney owners (sometimes they are the same person/people) just need enough players to field a couple of teams in each age group so that they can milk them for all they are worth. they know the parents who are left are wealthy enough and desperate enough to pay whatever bill they are given. they will fly to whatever state to play pick up games, or what they call "recruiting" trips. pay whatever travel costs there are. do whatever it takes to get johnny/janie on the "all-star" team so they can get their name in the recruiting write-ups and get talked about by ty z. lol. just like that scummy dude taking "fees" for getting kids in to elite colleges, the travel team owners are doing the same thing with selling "the dream" of "making it" to d1/d2/d3 lax or getting into a "prestigious" college.

a little off topic, but many players we know who got into the ivies supposedly via lax actually have parents who went to that same ivy. everyone knows johnny/janie is a legacy and got in because daddy/mommy is a big alumni donor or member of a board or something. or they have relatives already at the school and that was their in. just google player last names and/or their daddy's name and put the money trail together.

regarding the comment about cabell maddux in an earlier post, and his past dirty deeds which everyone knows about so I am not slandering him with this post, i found that families and players will look past a coach's ugly reputation and past as long as they can play with other super talented players. every player wants to play with top flight players, no matter what. even if it has to be tied to someone like maddux or other slimey characters whom they would normally NOT associate themsevles with if it were any other social event outside of lax. I had to stomach being around low charcter coaches and team owners for the sake of my son to be on certain teams. thank god my son came to realize what kind of people he was dealing with and the level of integrity he had to compromise to achieve his "dream" of playing college lax. some people never get it. some have drank so much kool-aid and are so far into denial that they can't even admit the truth that is right in front of them. these are the kind of families the lax team owners are looking for and banking on. sad.

Everybody may know it, but that does not make it true:



First a couple of anecdotes. On the JHU thread (maybe it was LP), a frequent poster noted a friend of his was a regular, large donor, which I interpreted as at least 5 figures annually, with the promise of 6 some day, and maybe 7 in his will. His qualified child did not get in to JHU. Closer to home, a relative of mine had done spectacularly well, and was looking a trying to get his son into his highly-selective, but non-Ivy alma mater. He found, that, while his son was qualified (say 50-75 percentile), it took 7 figures just to move the needle, but for something resembling a lock, he had to put his name on a building. If those anecdotes are for non-Ivys, I find it difficult to believe that ordinary, generous, alumni giving has any impact at all on Ivy admissions.

And for data, which shows, while their admit rate is higher, legacies are generally more qualified than non-legacies:

Code: Select all

		No Legacy	Primary Legacy	Secondary Legacy
Mean SAT Critical Reading	679	699	684
Mean SAT Mathematics		685	694	689
Admit Rate (total)		20.5%	43.7%	31.4%
Admit Rate (early decision)	39.0%	56.8%	51.5%

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissio ... applicants

Then why is Aunt Becky going to prison, breaks my heart, probably my first crush.

[44WeWantMore]

Aunt Becky and the rest were trying to bribe their way in for a few hundred thousand. They knew an open donation of the same amount to the general scholarship fund would not get their unqualified progeny admitted and they were unwilling to put their names on an eight figure building.

[hooligan88]

So the bubble burst. What's next?

[runrussellrun]

Like I have written many times before on this board and others, greed and egos has and will kill this sport so that only the very wealthy and committed will be playing this sport. travel team and lax tourney owners (sometimes they are the same person/people) just need enough players to field a couple of teams in each age group so that they can milk them for all they are worth. they know the parents who are left are wealthy enough and desperate enough to pay whatever bill they are given. they will fly to whatever state to play pick up games, or what they call "recruiting" trips. pay whatever travel costs there are. do whatever it takes to get johnny/janie on the "all-star" team so they can get their name in the recruiting write-ups and get talked about by ty z. lol. just like that scummy dude taking "fees" for getting kids in to elite colleges, the travel team owners are doing the same thing with selling "the dream" of "making it" to d1/d2/d3 lax or getting into a "prestigious" college.

a little off topic, but many players we know who got into the ivies supposedly via lax actually have parents who went to that same ivy. everyone knows johnny/janie is a legacy and got in because daddy/mommy is a big alumni donor or member of a board or something. or they have relatives already at the school and that was their in. just google player last names and/or their daddy's name and put the money trail together.

regarding the comment about cabell maddux in an earlier post, and his past dirty deeds which everyone knows about so I am not slandering him with this post, i found that families and players will look past a coach's ugly reputation and past as long as they can play with other super talented players. every player wants to play with top flight players, no matter what. even if it has to be tied to someone like maddux or other slimey characters whom they would normally NOT associate themsevles with if it were any other social event outside of lax. I had to stomach being around low charcter coaches and team owners for the sake of my son to be on certain teams. thank god my son came to realize what kind of people he was dealing with and the level of integrity he had to compromise to achieve his "dream" of playing college lax. some people never get it. some have drank so much kool-aid and are so far into denial that they can't even admit the truth that is right in front of them. these are the kind of families the lax team owners are looking for and banking on. sad.

Everybody may know it, but that does not make it true:

First a couple of anecdotes. On the JHU thread (maybe it was LP), a frequent poster noted a friend of his was a regular, large donor, which I interpreted as at least 5 figures annually, with the promise of 6 some day, and maybe 7 in his will. His qualified child did not get in to JHU. Closer to home, a relative of mine had done spectacularly well, and was looking a trying to get his son into his highly-selective, but non-Ivy alma mater. He found, that, while his son was qualified (say 50-75 percentile), it took 7 figures just to move the needle, but for something resembling a lock, he had to put his name on a building. If those anecdotes are for non-Ivys, I find it difficult to believe that ordinary, generous, alumni giving has any impact at all on Ivy admissions.

And for data, which shows, while their admit rate is higher, legacies are generally more qualified than non-legacies:

Code: Select all

		No Legacy	Primary Legacy	Secondary Legacy
Mean SAT Critical Reading	679	699	684
Mean SAT Mathematics		685	694	689
Admit Rate (total)		20.5%	43.7%	31.4%
Admit Rate (early decision)	39.0%	56.8%	51.5%

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissio ... applicants

What's that tell you about "elite" colleges?

For profit colleges like yours, and the Ivies. Pathetic that they act like money grubbing prostitutes, when , if only using 20% of their endowments, the interest alone would provide FREE college in perpetuity. For ALL enrolled.

Is it evah gonna be enough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9HRoBCKax4

[Mike75]

Yes, exactly, that is my point. I have extreme familiarity with the course of youth soccer over the past 35 year. It went from a sport no one outside of small niches had ever heard of to a very popular youth sport by the early 80s. At that point it was just town rec leagues, ala the halcyon days of lax everyone is referencing on here. It then moved to town travel teams, where after several years of rec the best players in the town would form a team that played against other towns, while rec still carried on for others. In the early 90s clubs really started to come up, which were geographic, in my small state of CT there were 3-4 top clubs splitting kids across the state mostly based on where they lived. This continued for a number of years before clubs expanded their reach, kids would “be on” a club in CT (Oakwood) or PA (Delco) and live in Ohio and just fly in to play in tournaments. This was the rule ( flying was of course not the norm but driving long distances obliterated the previous geographic basis) until the last 5-6 years when ODP completely took over. There are still the clubs but many of the very best are just locked into ODP from early years and the wondrous regionals tourney is lessened for it. AND YET, youth participation remains sky high. This is what I have been trying to say. There are MANY problems with club lax! But just having an emphasis on clubs, or an aggressive selecting out of top players, does not mean your sport needs to crash, or that your youth participation needs to crash, or that kids who are not joining top clubs at age 8 need to stop playing the sport.

The fundamental nature of the two games is so different that you can't compare them. Soccer can be played in some semblance of its intended form by kids who have never touched a soccer ball before. Lacrosse is NOT the same thing. There is a base skill level that at least some players must have to play it. You pull those kids out and the game of lacrosse is no longer fun past the very, very early stages.

More importantly, there have been enough rec league soccer kids to keep the rec leagues full for the kids who don't want to travel. From the 70's to today, I have yet to see soccer rec leagues suffer for participation.

add to that,
the rise of club soccer was in response to demand based on volume.
the rise of club lacrosse was based on the demand created through manufactured fear, and preying upon parent's belief that they could use money and an edge to get their kids an advantage.

what hoo dat says here is spot on.
less than ten years ago, our youth system fed 10-11 high schools. there were 3 major "towns", and the majority of the players came from one town who administered and marketed the program.
forced a split so our town (3 high schools) would have our own organization, and what had been 80 boys over 8 grades for years became over 250 within several years. in the last 3+ years, that ~250 and 14 teams over 8 grades has dropped to 90 and 5 teams. again, to feed 3 high schools.
not coincidentally the local clubs, following baltimore's lead to make it a 365 day payday --- went to spring (and an abolishment of playing rec @ the same time) -- after first bleeding from summer to fall, to winter workouts and box.
our town did not fill the pockets to the tune of 160 players to these clubs. or even close. but they took enough of them, that their buddies (who either couldn't make the club teams yet, or could no longer play with their skilled friends in rec) --- bailed, sooner or later. no longer could get better thru osmosis. the whole construct of getting better together, year to year, evaporated.
taking out 10-15 kids, out of 4 teams at a bi-annual age group -- takes out a lot more of them.
if you have 6-8 teams per year in soccer (which is what our town rec league has, in the spring and the fall), where everyone can still play at a "base" level and it's still a similar game, kids can get better... losing even 10+ kids per grade doesn't matter in the impact of their willingness and incentive to play.

this was not a very difficult thing to predict. i've had this conversation and prognostication with people since before the mention of spring club leagues was even broached. many other people have as well. the numbers will be dropping substantially over the next 5 years in my opinion. us lacrosse will be in crisis management mode, shocked that they couldn't see it coming, and citing other sports as this being inevitable. they helped bag the pooch all along. high school teams will drop jv (they have already), then it will be dropped as a varsity sport at many places. not if, but when.

p.s. our schools' populations are growing annually, and have averaged over 1 new hs per year in the county to accommodate for over a decade.

So do the clubs now take the place of HS lax in the spring? In my limited experience with girls clubs in SW CT, most of them are run by the local HS coaches, so the spring is off limits for club teams (for now at least). But have definitely seen the creep into club becoming a three season sport, although to be fair, it seems to be more of a "there if you want it" type of thing. But the town rec and travel teams still draw well, although the numbers seem to be down a bit due to demographic changes. And we tend to get an influx in 6/7th grade when kids get sick of soccer and want to try a new sport.

I do hope that lax does not become soccer. I find soccer fundamentally broken at the youth level, with rec coaches stacking teams to win games where no one keeps score and travel starting at second grade with a mandatory two season commitment. Once the clubs come into play, it becomes a four season sport with pressure to play for the club above all else. Perhaps this is a local issue and its different in other parts of the country, but I wasn't unhappy when my daughters decided to drop it for field hockey and lax.

[cltlax]

So do the clubs now take the place of HS lax in the spring? In my limited experience with girls clubs in SW CT, most of them are run by the local HS coaches, so the spring is off limits for club teams (for now at least). But have definitely seen the creep into club becoming a three season sport, although to be fair, it seems to be more of a "there if you want it" type of thing. But the town rec and travel teams still draw well, although the numbers seem to be down a bit due to demographic changes. And we tend to get an influx in 6/7th grade when kids get sick of soccer and want to try a new sport.

I do hope that lax does not become soccer. I find soccer fundamentally broken at the youth level, with rec coaches stacking teams to win games where no one keeps score and travel starting at second grade with a mandatory two season commitment. Once the clubs come into play, it becomes a four season sport with pressure to play for the club above all else. Perhaps this is a local issue and its different in other parts of the country, but I wasn't unhappy when my daughters decided to drop it for field hockey and lax.

I'm in the South, and in our area, there is little to no girls club lacrosse in the Spring during HS and Middle School seasons. However, I was at a tournament last weekend, and Robinson Sports was advertising its Spring club league for Virginia, Florida, the Carolinas, etc. Don't know if it will get legs down here, but it's the first shot across the bow.

My youngest still plays club soccer and it has turned into an almost 10 month season for her. Makes playing lacrosse and soccer challenging.

[Typical Lax Dad]

So do the clubs now take the place of HS lax in the spring? In my limited experience with girls clubs in SW CT, most of them are run by the local HS coaches, so the spring is off limits for club teams (for now at least). But have definitely seen the creep into club becoming a three season sport, although to be fair, it seems to be more of a "there if you want it" type of thing. But the town rec and travel teams still draw well, although the numbers seem to be down a bit due to demographic changes. And we tend to get an influx in 6/7th grade when kids get sick of soccer and want to try a new sport.

I do hope that lax does not become soccer. I find soccer fundamentally broken at the youth level, with rec coaches stacking teams to win games where no one keeps score and travel starting at second grade with a mandatory two season commitment. Once the clubs come into play, it becomes a four season sport with pressure to play for the club above all else. Perhaps this is a local issue and its different in other parts of the country, but I wasn't unhappy when my daughters decided to drop it for field hockey and lax.

I'm in the South, and in our area, there is little to no girls club lacrosse in the Spring during HS and Middle School seasons. However, I was at a tournament last weekend, and Robinson Sports was advertising its Spring club league for Virginia, Florida, the Carolinas, etc. Don't know if it will get legs down here, but it's the first shot across the bow.

My youngest still plays club soccer and it has turned into an almost 10 month season for her. Makes playing lacrosse and soccer challenging.

The 9 or 10 month cycle for soccer is a grind but if you don't play that much, the level drops.

[Dip&Dunk]

Continuing the thread jack...

We are all looking to see what the impact will be with the new recruiting rules.
1) Will private teams' importance grow less or just shift right?
2) Will grade repeating disappear/decrease because schools will get to see the prospects mature more?
3) Will non-hot-bed players get more attention since there is more time to evaluate?

Not related to the new recruiting rules but also germane: How will CTE/Concussion awareness impact lacrosse?
1) We can stop the "We want three sport athletes" charade?
2) Lacrosse will be lumped in with football as a sport to avoid?
3) Will the insurance companies charge dramatically more to insure youth lacrosse?
4) Could lacrosse be looked at as a less violent alternative to football and gain a slice of their pie?

Lots of things to consider inre the lax bubble.

[smoova]

Continuing the thread jack...

We are all looking to see what the impact will be with the new recruiting rules.

2) Will grade repeating disappear/decrease because schools will get to see the prospects mature more?

I've noted this in another thread, but since you asked here ... I've watched the following trend emerge in the last 12 months: 2021 player plays fall/summer of sophomore year with club team, doesn't get the D1 interest he expects/wants on September 1, tells club coach he is "committing" to do a PG year after high school, moves to 2022 team, takes a spot from a much younger player, plays the next fall/summer as a "sophomore" ... lather, rinse, repeat.

Not sure whether this is connected to the new recruiting rules, but it certainly seems to be.