BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM MadLax Lacrosse

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Obviously someone didn't make Madlax Orange...

Connor Shellenberger, Madlax 2019, to Johns Hopkins! Congratulations Connor, well earned.

First of many Madlax 2019's to commit

Hi, Mr. Shellenberger!

Well if this is his father, congrats, your boy worked hard and earned a spot on a top tier program. if and when my son commits I will surely put it out there so everyone will know that dedication and hard work pay off

Congrats to your son!!!!!!!

DONT BE HATERS, SOON YOU WILL BE HATING EVERY KID THAT GETS AN OFFER.

Good for the kid and his family. And sweet Jesus, just go do a VLC versus the volcano forum thread and take these ad homenim attacks elsewhere. It's a proud day for the kid and family so leave be alone. It isn't like the kid is an ingrate or quit his club recently. See what I did there? Really funny. Now just take this garbage somewhere else. Please.

Your green is showing.. fool!

Gotta love those 8th grade parents pushing their kids to decide already. Must have come down to the team mascots....or maybe the team sock colors???? Congrats Dad!!

Well, the kid has four years to change his mind if he wants to. This is a verbal commitment to Twitter a college intention. No grades, no scores. Nothing much to pick on here. It is a silly process, but take it with pounds of salt. Feel bad for th kids who commit to these schools and then don't get admitted. That happened to several 2015 high school class kids.

Congrats to the kid, and sure hope he takes doing well in school seriously because Hopkins is not a gut major lax bro school.

This kid might be going to Hopkins, but if he had played 2019 for Plc vhe would have won a spring championship playing down a league.

Do you ever get tired of saying the same schtick on this thread?

While I agree about leaving this kid alone, it is you who are bringing up another club to a thread (and recent topic) that doesn't involve it. You are also guilty of bringing up garbage.

Take it to a new VLC thread please. Thanks for playing.

that was the photo guy for madlax not his dad

not his dad that was the photographer

Who cares if it was his dad or Barbara Walters or the entertainer formerly named Prince. Get the message and take the retread personal attacks on Madlax parents or photographers and your trusty Deadspin article to another board please.

Nobody was attacking Madlax parents. Just calling out the kid's dad who was obviously boasting about his son.

But I guess it could have been the photographer instead. That guy is the biggest Madlax cheerleader on the planet.

If a parent is enthusiastic about congratulating a kid on a Madlax team, so be it. I am not a Madlax parent but do notice how beautiful and professional those photos are...I still have one of my son from a game my son's team played against Madlax on my phone and computer.

Sounds like the guy is enthusiastic and involved in providing some nice photos and videos for their teams. I wish he'd come over and photo our teams more! This vitriol belongs somewhere else. Please take it somewhere else.

Yes that was the photographer cause it was the same caption on his Facebook. Very nice guy just very passionate about madlax.

Is he a true 2019? What is his birth year? Not trying to stir pot, just curious if he is playing on age? Was he on the [lacrosse]'s team last December? I know the required birth certificates

He is on age. But has a old birthday.

Passionate is one way to describe it. I guess I would be passionate about Madlax if it was responsible for all the clients for my business.

The difference is you don't have a successful photography business and he does. Thanks for playing.

Well I guess you and he are both willing do ditch your morals to play for a guy who threatens kids who leave. Pure class.

There is a difference between being cross over a kid threatening to leave and reacting to a kid who did leave, you learned of it word of mouth and he / parents didn't return phone or email messages to confirm it for several weeks. I take no pity on Cabell Maddox for that whole escapade, but no even minded person could read that thread and not also think it is bad form to not have the common decency to notice "coach, thank you for the past lacrosse experience, I've decided to make a change of clubs for personal reasons." I'm not a Madlax parent, but I am far from believing the Madlax kids my son is school mate friends with are bad kids and I certainly don't buy that the parents are morally behind. If treating people in the worst way was standard procedure over there, Madlax would have disappeared. From my view it has grown in terms of participation and coach/team quality over the past two years. I don't know why that is, but it is and it is time for the naysayers to acknowledge that. Not urging you to jump on Cabell's bandwagon, but I am pretty sure I don't want to know how sausage is made at some other elite lacrosse clubs either.

The kid and the family did inform Madlax they were going to make a switch. This is America - you are allowed to change clubs if you wish.

Are you seriously condoning the threats the owner made in his emails? Talking to other families, I've heard others who received the same sort of treatment.

You really think it's ok to threaten to badmouth the kid to his future HS coach and possible college coach? Really?

They finally confirmed that the kid made a switch weeks after he did and was registered and uniformed at another club. Not condoning the email traffic, but that is the fact line and that was bad form. Not buying the I was too busy to return one of the repeated phone calls and emails bed time story. It was sleazy all around and the parents were equally at fault. If my son wanted to leave a lacrosse club, the immediate thing is to notice that club as a common courtesy, especially if the kid had been on non-paying scholarship and was given first dibs at showcase invites. My kid decides to leave an organization the next moment he would need to call and write a notice and give a thank you. I'd need to do that too. If a club lacrosse lunatic tried to engage a debate or sent one negative email, there would be no start of an email thread. Delete, permanent delete, done. This was a case of lacrosse ego divas gone wrong on both sides, and neither side looked rosy.

LOL. A family decided to make a change. Regardless of when/how they notified the owner, you are seriously condoing the words he said?

Threatening your customers because they thought there was a better choice? That equates to a customer not notifying you soon enough?

I know a family who left and gave notice weeks before they left. Got the same type of email/phone threats. And their credit continued to be charged for months afterwards.

My son left madlax this summer. He played with madlax for four years and was happy for 3 of those years, loved the kids he played with, played on the AAA and national teams, and began to think seriously about playing lacrosse at a D1 college. His last year at madlax was difficult however, as a new coach focused on helping other kids get recruited and significantly reduced our son's role on the team. Tournaments became a stressful experience for our son, wondering when he was finally going to get on the field, and no one was having fun watching him play anymore. After a year of less playing time, more time standing on the sidelines, no help with recruiting, and watching Cabell and the new coach heavily "market" a few specific kids -- one of whom was the photographer's son -- to every recruiting website and college recruiter possible, our son was depressed, unsure of himself, and less sure about his chances of getting noticed by a D1 college coach. We all realized that if he was going to be noticed by coaches, he needed to be on the field, playing lacrosse. We tried to leave madlax on good terms. We sent a prompt and gracious email before the summer tryouts thanking Cabell and the coaches for the many good years our son had with the team and wishing them well. We were surprised after a year of feeling invisible, to suddenly hear how important he was to the team and how ignorant we were as parents for pulling him out of madlax at this "crucial" recruiting time. Even after my husband called Cabell to try to reason with him (as he demanded) we received emails with silly threats and childish name-calling from Cabell. Cabell informed my son by text that it would be "nearly impossible" for him to get recruited to play D1 lacrosse without Cabell's help. He even told us that some college coaches had contacted him about our son, and intimated that if we wanted to know who the coaches were, we should allow our son to return to madlax. That seemed unethical to me. And extremely childish.

My son now says that leaving madlax was one of the best decisions he ever made. This summer, he was able to do some showcases with his high school team and some individual events. He also did a couple of tournaments with a new travel program in our area. This program has a very supportive coaching staff that saw my son's potential and let him play and get his confidence back. After a summer of playing great lacrosse and having fun for a change, he has recently verbally committed to a D1 program. I know it has been difficult for him to leave the friends he made on the madlax team, but in the end, because we were treated so poorly by Cabell and by his coach, it was easier to do than we thought it would be. Cabell has not changed. He likes to take credit for how talented a player is. He takes credit for things he has nothing to do with. In a way I feel a little sorry for him. He doesn't realize that some college coaches (all of the coaches we talked with at least) don't respect him and only "deal with him" because they have to if they want to recruit one of his players. The college coaches we talked to understood perfectly why our son left madlax and some even told us they thought it showed great character. I know there are other parents who are unhappy with the madlax program for various reasons but are sticking with it. There are many reasons for that. Some might think that it will hurt their sons chances of being recruited. We did not find that to be the case. I understand that our decision isn't necessarily the right decision for others, but I wanted to share our story because it might help others who are feeling like they need a change but are unsure of the wisdom of making a change.

Good for you ! Nice to see someone stand up for their sons best interest against one of the big clubs ! Good luck to your son!

That is so yesterday

No, apparently not. What they did was ridiculous, in my opinion is equivalent to holding kids back and should not be casually swept under the rug.

Says a lot about NCAA coaches when they state to parents that they don't like or respect Maddox, yet on the next breath are on the phone with him to buy more middle schoolers from the herd. It is almost like hearing Dom Starsia say he's adverse to evaluating 9th graders and then committing one the next...oh, never mind.

Sounds like club coaches and college coaches have found a sanctuary at the bottom of the muddy pond.

Negative recruiting between clubs is standard operating procedure. Our son left Crabs and it came back to us directly that the owner and some Crabs parents went well out of their way to trash and disparage our son. At least some college coaches had the gonads to tell us that. It didn't damage our son. When coaches see that a kid has top grades in honors courses and hear all about how good of a kid the high school coach who has him for 100 days and not just a few hit-and-run summer club events they can figure out sour grapes. If Cabell Maddox wants to trash a kid all day long let him. Sure, there's a guy who has a great idea about th character of a kid who went to a few recruiting tournaments.

Well, maybe I should redact the posts I made as a non-Madlax parent. He is loathe some given the post from the ex Madlax mom. Problem in this sport now is where do you do for a competitive club that is not being run by a scumbag?

Nobody is in the same class as the Madlax owner when it comes to being a scumbag.

Are there really no other quality NoVa youth clubs? Hard to believe. Greater RDU area in NC, as an example, has multiple quality clubs and much lower population.

None of the clubs from NC are any good. Is this some kind of joke?

Not a joke. My point is they have some decent teams and I've never seen another NoVa club field a non-hotbed A team, much less a hotbed A or AA team.

But to get specific comparing to MadLax (which was not my point), Summer Exposure 2022A championship was between two NC teams. Wasn't the 2022AA division, admittedly, but winner beat the Roughriders 2022 team 10-3 that Madlax beat 10-6 in the following weekend. NC team won U11A Summer Exposure championship. NC 2021 team is AA team by all accounts, losing to Igloo's Black Ice by 1 goal and outscoring teams 24-3 at Capital Classic (admittedly, again, not against hotbed A teams). Madlax 2021 beat a much lesser NC 2021 team by 7-2 there, which is dominant but not a blowout. NC 2020 team played AA at Young Guns and was competitive going 1-2.

Madlax did great at [lacrosse]'s winning U13 and U15 divisions. Anyone notice who won the next division older against a national FCA team?

I'm not a NC homer. My point is that I just know they field surprisingly competitive youth teams (considering that's NASCAR territory) whereas I haven't found any other NoVa clubs to be competitive.

The mom's post above is pretty damning. Doesn't mean the other Madlax coaches aren't great and the team experiences aren't great. I just can't believe there's not more competition in the area.

You haven't seen them because your son is young and you play in marginal tournaments. Summer Exposure, for example, used to be a pretty good tournament, but it has really gone downhill.

Blackwolf and VLC both have superior 2016 and 2017 teams to Madlax. For 2018, Blackwolf 2018 is just as good as Madlax and VLC isn't that far behind. Madlax 2019 is definitely the best in this area for 2019s. For 2020, it's a weak grade in the DMV and Madlax is better than VLC's team, but neither are that great. Blackwolf is starting up Middle School teams, so their teams will be strong in short time.

If you think Madlax is the only team fielding AA teams in the DMV, you are lack perspective.

If NC teams are a joke than Madlax is a joke.

2019 Team Carolina team lost by 1 twice to Madlax at the Capital Classic

From looking at comparable scores at Capital Classic and Young Guns, Carolina Cannons u13 and Team 24/7 2020 are equivalent with Madlax 2020

Team Carolina (Cyclones) 2021 would beat Madlax 2021 easily

Nobody cares about North Carolina lacrosse, dude.