Pannell is 5'10 and Manny is 5'9. Those are examples of gritty, albiet already undersized in the new order, lacrosse attackmen. Remember, the MLL you see today or and the college game you see today is the product of hotbed only kids who came up BEFORE the game blew up in other geographic regions. Taking it down to 5'5 is an extreme of the extremes for the Pannell / Manny generation, and now in the college game Sankey and Cavanaugh may be the last of the waterbugs. This is just my guess, maybe you are right with a point that this game can be played where a high IQ and fast kid that small can still play with poles 9-12 inches taller. And that whole can't play lacrosse looking down at the chest of a defender is pretty silly. Those lacrosse All-Americans of yester-year wouldn't be D1 prospects today.
I did make the genetics comment. Obviously some disagree, and of course some great athletes are born into non-athlete families. My point was insofar as early recruiting is concerned, D1 lacrosse coaches seem to be off the grid too far grabbing those lights out little U-15 kids whose parents are also unathletic twerps. If you are going to project, do it with some better data. But maybe you and the college lacrosse coaches are all right, and the football recruiters from SEC, Big 10, Pac 12, etc have it all wrong and size, strength, speed taken together as a baseline have absolutely nothing to do with it.
And to be perfectly fair, a lot of defensive lacrosse dads who played some a generation ago love to point out about junior's lacrosse pedigree, IQ he inherited from pops are a principal reason why colleges should only recruit from LI or MD. You think your kids inherit lacrosse brains but not your physical make-ups? Stand up on a couple of phone books and answer that one for us. We'd love to hear again about how lacrosse IQ and being sired by someone who played for SUNY Bingo back in the day somehow translates but the physical attributes do not.
