I played another sport at a high D1 level and have coached youths through middle schoolers in the same sport for over 25 years. Now I have kids who play lacrosse as something to compare to. First, I've been on the receiving side of college recruiter calls thousands of times for hundreds of kids from HS All-Americas to D1 through kids who just wanted to keep going in D3 for fun beyond their studies.
I would state unequivocally that I am not qualified to protect who will or won't be a top college prospect in 9th grade. Out of the hundreds of kids I helped through recruiting I coached 4 kids who I honestly believed were no brainer future D1 stars. I was right twice. The other two, a kid dropped into trouble and dropped out of the sport. Another kid was just advanced and developed for his age and was simply the same kid in 12th grade he was in 9th, which was very frustrating for him when recruiters never came as expected. I also don't know or know of any club coach in my sport who would say different, and I have never spoken to a college recruiter who believed they could predict with any quality the college prospects for a 9th grader. Quite literally, what hampers early recruiting in other sports is a widespread belief that is will lead to disastrous results, and the most accurate recruiting that involves a scholarship has the best results the later it is.
I'm not a lacrosse guy, but I am a coach and like the Parcells rule states I can only evaluate what I see. I look at a 2019 or even a 2018 game and I see some kids in a sport not nearly seasoned enough to pass high level D1 sports from a physical, mental, mental toughness or academic perspective. That last one is important because I count so many dozens of kids who got a girlfriend, then the wrong friends, had some problems at home or some other trouble and fell away from the academic potential they had. I don't really care how expert or not Ty Xanders is, because that is moot. Unless lacrosse truly is unlike every other sport, early recruiting is a lighthouse for the soon to be shipwrecked.
A little advice to you, if you want to get reply's and reactions on a post you need to make grand statements or go negative on a kid, team or town or nobody is going to pay attention. And by the way, thank you for your post it was spot on.
