Does anyone have their son play club lacrosse because their son likes the game and likes to compete? I find it comical that most posts end up talking about recruiting. Wake up a majority of our sons are not playing big time D1 lacrosse. Express, 91, Igloo, Icon, Outlaws, True Blue etc. That is 100 boys right there plus at least the first three programs have a second team. Yes the top few players on each team will play D1. The top teams will probably have several more who play D1. The rest are dreaming. Except in rare cases the scholarship money is not that significant. Teach your kid how to love the game and enjoy the highest level of competition. The rest will work itself out.
While I fully agree with most of what you posted, True Blue's 2017 class has at least 7 boys going on to play DI lacrosse. In that they are not even a top tier program, I am not sure your assessment about how many LI boys will play DI is accurate - but, yes, there is little lax scholarship money available for anyone given that every team has 12.6 scholarships, max, for teams of 40+.
I agree with what you say as well. As a counterpoint, though, consider if most of your 2021 team wants to play in college; if folks know college coaches will be looking at 2021's this Summer; age 13 or 14 is too young to know if your kid is going to grow into DI material; and your son's favorite team, like JHU or UNC, will basically fill its 2021 recruiting class by the end of August 2017. How can you as a coach not take recruiting into account when you make your 2017 plans? How can you expect parents not to care - and sports parents are generally pretty crazy in terms of thinking little Johnny will be the next Paul Rabil and frantically looking for greener pastures versus their kid having fun.
For example, take a 2021 team that will probably have a number of potential D3 and probably no DI players. But you don't know. The team might have six DI players if they all grew to 6'2". That 90-lb 14 year old might have size 11 feet and dad that played pro sports for a couple years after college.
Until kids grow, however, I don't see the point of chasing PS Showcase, or Black Card or Showtime or Jake Reed, and it will suck if they turn out to be good enough but lose their 2021 recruiting spots to early maturers and reclasses. But, thank god, it shouldn't suck that much now that Duke and UVA are slowing down their recruiting timetable and ND was already slow. My point is only is that if you are eventually good enough, you will be OK even if you can't go to UNC or JHU (although that really would suck if you were in-state in NC).
