If I’m a club director/coach, I’d be telling my players, you’re welcome to go play on a team like red hots if it doesn’t interfere with your main club team. But if you start missing practices or tournaments to go play on Team Insta, you’re gone. Make a choice.
Well some local clubs may loose that choice. Unfortunately for them but good for us because our kids have a lot more options. Clubs need to up their game to keep all their players not just lookout for the studs. Clubs make and break too many promises, take money and don’t play kids, play favorites, have bad coaches who don’t develop and sometimes even break kids down to the point that they don’t want play. We all know the flavors of each of these clubs and now we’re also exposed to other families with older players so we know which clubs hosed them when recruiting time came. So why pay several thousand when you can pay a few hundred and play on a national team where the coach is happy to have everyone there and the kids get exposure, even the UPenn’s head coach’s son plays for RH (and Freedom) met him at BIC good guy. Not to mention everyone is new to the team so there aren’t favorites and they want to get on the map so they seem to promote their kids (a lot of national helmets at BIC) which like it or not I don’t care how good your kid is without support from a sprcoach making or at least answering calls for you kid from colleges, they’re not getting recruited. The only downside of these teams was lack of practices, but they are now holding monthly practice camps. Even with the expense of travel, you’re still not at the same price as a lot of these local clubs and a lot less drama with more support. Local clubs need to wise up and start to do better or they’re going to start to disappear. You already seen it in the rankings. All that stuff is important but most important is when my kid has played on those teams he actually looks like he’s having fun and the next day when he gets home and wakes up, he wants to hit the wall on his own.
The other downside is just that it's too much lacrosse. My son plays on one of the HOCO teams and gets invited to guest play with other teams all the time. This year we've had to say no to most opportunities just to keep him from getting worn out. There's no point in playing 7+ elite tournaments a year. Your kid probably plays 3-5 with his club team then guest plays a couple with a RH or another club and the kid is just done. Injuries don't heal, each game means less and less and they lose the joy of playing.
If your kid plays for an elite club, and an elite MIAA school, playing for RH or other pickup teams doesn't make a lot of sense after the first tournament or two. They already get the exposure they need and there are diminishing returns for playing your 7th or 8th tournament in a summer.
Just my opinion.
Accurate, but only about 90 2028s play elite lax AND go MIAA-A (or DC equivalent) (the rest of the MIAA roster spots are filled by A, AA, AAA players). There's a reason (Besides high profit margin) that mid level teams like Koopers, Predators, Green Turtle, Looneys have existed over the years). Gotta get your #2 FOGO and #5 goalie from somewhere....
I think as dads and coaches we need to be a little more cautious on this type of advice....."exposure?" Recruiting is changing dramatically. There were 100+ lax players in the transfer portal a month ago. They are bigger, faster, higher lax IQ than your 2028 Crabs player will be in the summer after 10th grade (even if he's 18 at that point). Plus the transfer kids have a year of college maturity and grades to show they're ready. Unlike some of the MIAA's 2.5 GPA ballers.
The recruitment of top 2025s has not looked AT ALL like it was "supposed to" and if I'm the owner of an elite lax club, I'm probably freaking out a bit - I don't want recruitment to move away from 10th-11th grades because the story of "this college junior transferring to Duke, played for our club 4 years ago! Let's Go Braydenn!" is too long and random. By the way.....Duke alone has picked up 6 transfers from the portal this season. That's six fewer HS commitments needed for the 2025s. I can name 3 clubs (2 in MD, 1 in NJ) who openly sell their club dues based on the near 100% of past players that received at least one D1 offer. Curious how they update their sales pitch.
But all that yada yada is to say that even thinking about "exposure" with incoming 9th graders is no longer even really a thing. But to your point, sports burnout is a thing. Getting worked over by hostile/angry coaches after you flew across the country to play for them, and then being like "that's it," yeah that's a real thing. Re-thinking all of it when a coach who promised to stick with you just stops returning your calls, that's a real thing too. Adding these additional tournament teams to the mix for our boys can open up a world of more lax and more fun, but there's potential down sides too.
One of the coolest sales pitches I heard was from Crabs, talking about their prohibition on playing for tourney teams: "We'll get you as much lacrosse as you can possibly want." That club has plenty of drama and problems I'm sure, but that is a solid sales pitch to parents and players.
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