LaxPower Back-Up Stick

Looking for any reports on how the Central Fl. area is looking in the New Year, will Bishop Moore be in the hunt again, will Lk. Highland regain their past predominance, and just where has Lk. Brantley gone. Looking forward to seeing the lights on at the local HS"s for some lacrosse.

Well with the first week of practice almost complete, is there any news to share ? How are the teams looking ?

Hey! Why the heck didn't you let me know this site existed? I didn't find out until TODAY!

Here's the Preseason Top 25 and my Final Four prediction:

1) Jupiter – to be the man you have to beat the man

2) Ponte Vedra – they are LOADED, this could be the year

3) Bishop Moore – last year’s runner up starts high, how much will they miss Hudson Bohn in the big games?

4) Oxbridge – not quite as deep as some others but they NEVER BEAT THEMSELVES

5t) Cardinal Mooney – last year’s breakout program, the ‘5t’ gets settled in March when they show up in Boca Raton

5t) Saint Andrew’s – another program that is a little thin but will not beat themselves

7) Jesuit of Tampa – hard to get a feel right now but a Final 8 run last season. Toughest obstacle to a Final Four return is that Plant is in the same district

8) Benjamin – have a feeling that this team is ready to start to climb back into contention but there’s always that Military Trail rival

9) St. Thomas Aquinas – depth might be an issue with graduations

10) Lake Highland Prep – kind of like Benjamin in that last season seemed a fluke, Bohn will definitely make a difference

11) Plant – very solid season, will they follow up?

12) Oak Hall – lost a LOT to graduation, now let’s see if it’s rebuild or reload

13) Lake Mary – always a combination of some top seniors and young pups and the pups tend to determine how it goes

14) Winter Park – this is where it starts to get iffy in choosing

15) American Heritage-Plantation – every year they have gotten better and another step up is possibly in the cards

16) Canterbury School – just like AH-Plantation and the next step is likely here too

17) Nease – let’s see how they rebound after a tough schedule last year

18) Sickles – great last season, can they go back to back?

19) Stoneman Douglas – it’s a year later and I suspect they’ll be playing extra hard

20) Newsome – probably year to year the toughest team to rank for me

21) Belen Jesuit – very young but the youngsters got a LOT of experience last year

22) Creekside – injury-racked last year but a consistent program

23) The First Academy – very quietly had an excellent season last year

24) St. Augustine – can they carry through last year’s great late season?

25) Lake Brantley – another school that quietly had an excellent season last year



Also Considered:

Gulf Breeze – great year, will need to see how they handle being the hunted

Maclay – a long time strong program seems to have their long term answer at Coach after floundering around for a few years

Fleming Island – needs to get a big win to move up

Montverde Academy – let’s see how fast Brooks Sweet makes an impact

Steinbrenner – fast start, slow finish needs to be changed

Riverview-Sarasota – can easily move up with a fast start

Bishop Verot – let’s see how fast Coach Ventiquattro makes an impact

Gulf Coast – another tough team for me to rank because I haven’t seen them for awhile

Merritt Island – Nice 2018, can they continue to improve?

Viera – playing STA early, should be able to judge then

Melbourne Central Catholic – the program just keeps producing winning seasons

St. Edwards – firmly established now as the top team in Martin County

Kings Academy – taking on an enormous leap in schedule, for the right reason

American Heritage-Delray – seems the best possibility to finish 2nd in their tough district

Pine Crest – will need to see them in action first

Western – Coach Shanahan building them up and the schedule gets real this season

Gulliver Prep – needs to win early and get some big wins



As for the FHSAA playoffs, I’ll make this quick:
We might well see a complete rematch from last year in the Final 8, but I think that Oxbridge will find their way out of the Southeast this year, with the first round game against SA being paramount.

In the Treasure Coast/Gulf Coast I think the home field advantage in the regional final will be HUGE. Cardinal Mooney should find their way back with Canterbury being the main impediment. The Jupiter/Benjamin winner will be on the other side and the home team might very well prevail.

In the North I don’t see anyone blocking Ponte Vedra this year

In the Tampa/Orlando area it will be interesting to see the Bishop Moore/LHP dynamic play out and if Jesuit gets by Plant. I do think Bishop Moore is still the favorite in that bracket right now

So, we are setting up another Bishop Moore/Ponte Vedra semifinal and I think that the result gets reversed this time

The other side of the bracket is awesome on paper. Just like the home field helps CM or Jupiter/Benjamin so will an Oxbridge/Cardinal Mooney Final Four, if that happens, would help Oxbridge since they play on that field at times.

Just like last year the permutations are endless and that’s a great thing for lacrosse fans.

Since I am ‘paid’ (well, not really) to make predictions let’s go with

Ponte Vedra vs Bishop Moore

and

Oxbridge vs the home team of Cardinal Mooney/Jupiter/Benjamin

and a Ponte Vedra vs Oxbridge championship game with PV finally taking home the trophy . . .

And I wish I could master Snap Chat so this disappears LONG before May 11th.

Always impressive, and insightful. Nice work.

Classic Lroggy lazy predictions.

On this past Saturday, there was a 6 team preseason tourney at Barron. The best team there by far was Admiral Farragut Academy (I think but am not sure that that school is not in FHSAA). The next best team by far was Barron Collier. Then came Bishop Verot.

Scores were something like 12- 3 AFA over Verot (approximate) and 5-0 AFA over Barron and then Barron over Verot by a lot (forget the score something like 7-10 to 3). (All the games were 30 minutes running time.)

... then came Ft. Myers, and then the Key West and Estero.

Also re. the Ventriquato (sp?) coaches at Verot ... that team did not look like a well coached team. Listless, confused on clears, ineffective man up. Verot may have played the day before (according to Maxpreps), but the best coached team at that tourney was AFA by far.

My two cents at least.

PS. Happy there is finally some activity on the Florida board.

Farragut is not in a District yet. It's always been my position that if you can't play for the FHSAA title you won't be considered. I saw Farragut over the summer and they have nice talent but it didn't always play together well. If they were eligible I would definitely have them around #20 based on what I saw.

To be clear, lroggy's rankings had Bishop Verot as an "also considered" and Barron was neither ranked nor also considered.

In the 30 minute scrimmage, Barron was up 7-1 and then Barron's coach (for reasons no one really understood, including probably him) put the back up keeper in who let in 2 softies. So the starter came back and shut out Verot from then on to end the game.

The points being that (i) if Verot is an also considered, that team is not close to Barron and (ii) that maybe the Ventriquattos are overrated.

My $.02 ... of course I watched the games, but what do I know ..

and lastly, Verot loses to Gulf Coast 14-1 tonight.

Your question as to why did the coach switch goalies mid-scrimmage?
Because it was a scrimmage.

I'm interested in hearing about Oak Hall this year.
Saw them last year, and they were REALLY good, in all phases.
Much more than just #5, though he is terrific.

They did have some significant losses to graduation, that's why I said in the preview is it a rebuild or a reload? Jonathan is really building something nice there but has it been enough years to fully stock the feeder system yet?

Is there a story on your user name?

I found when I coached baseball, the kids were way more interested in the unfortunate post mortem of, whom many call the greatest hitter of all time, than his theories on the game.
Little league and cryonics.
So, a running team joke would be to 'hit it like Headless Ted!'
Anyway, we were a damn good hitting squad.

No Headless Ted, I know perfectly well why the coach switched goalies.

lroggy: Because I saw that on the results of a 5k run I participated in and I liked it.

It's February and playoff jostling has begun in District 6.
Fleming Island clips Nease.
That's a heck of a win. District currency sitting in the bank, all year.

Saw the clip of Cardinal Mooney vs. LHP.
Great stuff.

I hadn't seen Cardinal Mooney, so it was neat to see them throw it around.
Lot of guys looking to shoot. I can see why they're honking their horn a little.

LHP seems to have their stable of alley dodging middies who can shoot back. Lot of offense.

News reporting IMG Academy’s director of college entrance exam preparation involved in the recently broken college admissions scandal.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-man- ... -smart-guy

It really is a tough break for the teams in the top half of Region 4, Districts 25-28. The 4 District winners ranks on MaxPreps (4/23):

#2 Oxbridge vs #5 St. Andrew's (St. Andrew's 12-5 win 4/25)
#11 Pine Crest v #8 St. Thomas (4/26 7pm)

Plus, these Districts also include these Top 50 ranked teams that didn't make it out of Districts:

#9 American Heritage (Plantation)
#25 King's Academy
#21 Boca Raton
#38 Calvary Christian (Fort Lauderdale)
#45 St. John Paul II
#48 Stoneman Douglas

If you break each region into top and bottom and average the Max Preps Rankings of the 4 District winners, here is how it stacks up:

Region 4 Top - 6.50
Region 3 Top - 18.75
Region 1 Top - 24.00
Region 1 Bottom - 25.75
Region 2 Bottom - 28.50
Region 2 Top - 28.75
Region 3 Bottom - 40.00
Region 4 Bottom - 50.00 (Mostly due to #109 Key West)

From the 4/23 MaxPreps rankings (between District and Regional rounds), these are the teams in the Top 32 that didn't advance:

#6 IMG - Independent
#9 American Heritage (Plantation) - D28
#10 Creekside - D6
#18 Benjamin - D24
#20 Canterbury - D18
#21 Boca Raton - D26
#24 Berkeley Prep - D16
#26 Hagerty - D9
#27 Out-of-Door - D17
#28 Lake Brantley - D8
#29 Montverde - D11
#31 Fleming Island - D6

Looking at this list, District 6 has the best argument for at-large berths being a factor but I do think that Regional seeding would go a long way to rewarding the better teams with a deeper run.

Sure, this is self serving to a degree because I work at Pine Crest, but it's frustrating for our kids to work so hard all year and then run into a buzz saw that other schools don't have to deal with to get to a Region Final at the least. <a href="https://www.floridalacrossenews.com/lee ... -for-2019/" target="new">Lee Rogenberg makes a case in this post</a> but I wanted to ask this forum the question, is there a better way to structure the FHSAA Playoffs?

Lax.com's 2021 High School Lacrosse Preview: Florida



The start of Florida High School Lacrosse season remains unchanged from previous years. At this time, the season is expected to begin on Feb. 15, and Ponte Vedra (Fla.) is still the defending champion.

Florida moved to a multi-tiered playoff system for the first time in 2020 with Class 1A and 2A, but fans did not get to see how that would play out. Every FHSAA season before 2020, there was only one champion. The sport has blossomed in the Sunshine State, and the growth has brought a change in the classification system.

This year, Ponte Vedra will compete in Class 2A along with St. Thomas Aquinas (Fla.), who was the 2019 runner-up. Joining both these squads will also be the 2018 state champion, Jupiter (Fla.).

While Florida's early years were highlighted by dominant teams in which the same team won multiple titles in consecutive years, recent history showcases the expansion of lacrosse in the state. St. Thomas Aquinas (Fla.) was the last team to win successive titles in 2016 and 2017.

There will likely be a first-time champion in at least one of those divisions with the two-division lineup with most fans were curious about how the new format would impact the 2020 playoffs, and that anticipation carries over into 2021.

Players to Watch

Ari Allen, M, 2021, IMG Academy, Uncommitted

Trace Davidson, M, 2021, Gulf Coast, Maryland

Sean Jordan, LSM, 2022, St. Andrew's School, Harvard

Chris Caldwell, LSM... [more]

HS BOYS: Florida – Wed. 03/10/21

https://fanlax.com/2021/03/10/hs-boys-f ... -03-10-21/

HS BOYS FL: Yesterday and Today (Thursday 03/11/21)

https://fanlax.com/2021/03/11/hs-boys-f ... -03-11-21/

HS BOYS FL: Yesterday and This Weekend (Friday 03/12/21)

https://fanlax.com/2021/03/12/hs-boys-f ... -03-12-21/

HS BOYS FL: Weekend, Coming Week (Mon 03/15/21)

https://fanlax.com/2021/03/15/hs-boys-f ... -03-15-21/