BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums NORTHEAST LACROSSE BOTC MAIN FORUM (LI, CT, WC) Early Recruiting

No personal connection at all. We are talking about Kessenich voicing his dislike of early recruiting. Kessenich voiced his dislike of it and how his friends who coach that he respects are doing it. What more can he do.

Gibberish.

Quint is terrible and shockingly enough not respected by people in the sport. Since he started other sports on ESPN he comes out of left field very often ill informed. Sons coach has a few friends on MLL teams and he is despised there which is why he has been taken away from most MLL action. Guy is a fraud. Now Evan Washburn, Carcaterra or even yesterday Ryan Boyke are true professionals. Quint is not

I'm thinking that you are referring to boys lax. Because of you are referring to girls' lacrosse - you are way off. Is this why your 'chose' not to have your kid(s) play on "top club teams"?

Terrible or not he is all we have to grow the sport right now. Do you really think he wants to ruffle feathers and ask the hard questions and cause problems. He wants to keep this career going. There are so many problems in the sport and you can point fingers all day. Change is slow process. You can look back as far as the Gait brothers and how old they were when they played at Syracuse. Early recruiting was not big in those days. Freshmen were 18 not 19-20. You went to a school after you decided in 11 -12 grade and STAYED THERE. You didnt commit early and then only last a year because you don't like where you are. When you have kids that are 21 yr old freshmen things are going to happen. Last thing and I have played the game for 40+ years at all levels IT IS A BUSINESS

I'd never put PC and RB in same category as Washburn. Washburn is the only one of the bunch to truly handle multiple sports, extremely well.

RB is the leader of promoting holdbacks and teaching players and families on how to beat the system, who are you kidding?

As I stated above, Carcaterra says he's against early recruiting, yet he promotes it and profits from it through his Elite Showcase camp. He further is an active participant and facilitator of the holdback and double holdback scourge as well. Not bashing the guy, just stating the facts. Can't say one thing and profit from the exact opposite.

I totally agree with you. Here's another thought: If these same parents spent their thousands of dollars on math or science extra help, extracurricular courses or summer camps instead of travel lacrosse and clinics, their kids could get a much more valuable academic scholarship, succeed throughout college and then land a high-paying job once school ended. Great math skills can get you very far in life as math builds critical thinking skills necessary for any rewarding career. It's the nerds that make the big bucks, not the athletes. For every successful professional athlete, there are many more successful businessmen in the corporate world. I also don't understand why parents spend so much money on a sport in which there is no chance of earning a living playing it. If your son is a great athlete, steer him towards the sports that pack the stadiums and are on primetime TV. Lacrosse peaks in college and then it fizzles. It's a dead-end sport. I've been to MLL games. D1 (even D2 and D3) college games much more exciting.

I agree, the money probably would be better spent elsewhere . That being said, I have a find who's kid is lights out and LOVES the game, so in some ways, he is stuck so I donut blame hi for going Fla and other places. He refuses to hold his kid back a year though.But unless you kid is lights out money spent on other extra curricular activities , Eagle Scout, etc will help more for getting into schools and getting money off. If you are very good student and your borderline for a certain college they may take you if you play lax, practice squad players always needed and players who bring the team average up. I have seen not so good players helped pt get into a place because they play.

I used to agree with what your saying but I'm starting to not believe it anymore. I have a close family friend who's son does extremely well in school. As of right now he is ranked 2nd in his class and has over a 100 weighted average. He is in all honors classes and take multiple ap courses. He also did extremely well on his sat's. He's in some clubs but does not play any sports. He applied to about 10 very good schools including some ivy's. So far he's only got into one school he applied to. There's been at least 5 or 6 that said no or has wait listed him. I know another kid who was a great wrestler in high school and had like a 90 average. He is now a freshman at Harvard. If it wasn't for wrestling he had ZERO chance of going to Harvard.

I'm surprised that your friend's son school acceptances are going tougher than expected with that perfect grade average and high SATs. Can his lack of sports be the only reason? Hard to believe but your story about the wrestling kid confirms it. I'm glad to hear it helped him get into Harvard.

Top schools want unique. Some of the schools he applied to had 50,000 applicants for 2,500 spots. Unfortunately smart white men are not that unique. State wrestling champions are. To be fair the wrestler is very intelligent. Although his gpa was in the low 90's he scored very high on the sat's. Couple that with over 200 career wins and a state championship he could of went to any ivy or patriot league school.

HE IS A STATE CHAMP or a 1 percenter. the rest of us 99 percenters are better off with tutors

Ver few kids in the top cohort are getting into top 10 schools without a special, unique standout talent. That actually trumps good grades by a decent margin. The way it goes now, unless you are a minority, and even they are getting turned away like the white boys!

It's not necessarily that those in the "top cohort" don't get in to these top tier schools (top schools are made up of these top students), it's just that they have to basically roll the dice when it comes to the admissions process. Good non-URM students have to just throw applications all over the place and see what sticks.

Acceptance to the elite colleges is a daunting task, and there are a variety of reasons that extrodinary grades aren't enough anymore.

First is the ever growing number of applicants without increased numbers of spots. Personally, I blame the common application for this. Think about it, in the old days you had to fill out specific unique applications & write an essay that answered a specific question that the school had on their application, This was a pain in the [lacrosse], and most kids pushed back on the work of doing more than 5 or 6. It was always "one safe, one reach, and 4 probables". Couple that with the fact that the cost of applying to college hasn't really gone up much. In the 70s and early 80's it was about $35-40 bucks per school, now it's $60-80 per app. Most parents are okay with sending out a few extra apps, considering the competition for acceptance, and the kids are now only doing one application so they're on board with more too. Now kids are applying to mid teens, just making getting in that much harder.

Then look at it from the admission offices side. And this is what a good friend was told by the Admission head at Duke three years ago. His son was a high achiever at Duke but his daughter was rejected.....Top grades, volunteer work, extracurriculars and team sports. Just not a star in any.

Anyway, the guy said that every year they get their 18k to 20k applications. From that there are certain things that must be done, and certain things that get the attention of his team. They need to replace all the seniors who make things function. By that he meant sports teams, theater groups, band members, choirs, etc. etc.. This is hundreds of kids, and yes they need to meet academic standards, but if they are elite in their respective discipline then those standards may be lessened.

Then there is the legacy pool. All schools will look at legacies with a slightly different prism. Legacies with a history of financial giving will also be acknowledged, no shock there. Most children of graduates from elite school understand this is a help and will naturally apply to their parents Alma Maters.

The next bucket the dean from Duke mentioned is the VIP kids. These are the sons and daughters of influential folks. For example, kids of senators, CEOs, high profile people (not TMZ people)......you understand. This group might also include kids of foreign officials.

Then throw in the age old desire for these schools to have diversity. They want all 50 states recognized, they want a certain percentage of foreign students.
They want a diversity of ethnicities....duh.

Once they get through filling those slots that must be filled, or accepting the kid that they can't reject for "political reasons", they are left with a very contracted number of open seats. Perhaps as few as 50% of the incoming class.

At Duke, in this particular year they made the decision to cull the heard by eliminating anyone who hadn't achieved something at a National Level. Put another way, they wanted kids who had achieved something that garnered them some sort of national recognition or award. All the applicants that didn't fall into the previous buckets had grades that were good enough, all were top 5% of their HS classes. They were all great kids. Heck they were probably extremely well rounded, but unfortunately they weren't great at anything other than schoolwork.

Seems very unfair, until you think like the guy running a school, and you understand that schoolwork isn't the only thing that matters to a colleges success.

I don't believe that. Last year a girl in our high school, a public school in a small neighborhood, made it into 4 Ivy League colleges with academics only. Look at the kid from elmont who got into every Ivy League school. Only academics. People want to believe the "you need sports" because they have to make themselves feel better. Maybe your friend didn't get the SAT score he says he did

And why do you think the (admittedly very smart and very accomplished) kid from Elmont get into every school to which he applied? Let's not derail the thread here. You don't seem to understand how the college admissions process works.

The Elmont kid was a highly academic black Nigerian immigrant, who founded a mentoring program that was regionally recognized. It was his ethnicity and his recognized accomplishment that got him into all Ivies, not purely his academics.

Ughh, I think it was 99% Ethnicity. Do you have any idea how many white kids have much better grades and accomplishments and can't get into one Ivy???? The reverse discrimination is down right disgusting at this point.

As a Duke grad, I had hoped that Duke's "VIP" preferences were a thing of the past, back when they were trying to build an endowment. I would hope that a legacy (and I'd include a sibling in this regard) would be able to get in if they were above the median for academic benchmarks and well-rounded, but what you say is consistent with all the blather about wanting "pointy" students and a "well-rounded student body".

Anyway, back to ER but staying with Duke, what's a bummer is that Duke can only put their thumb on the admissions scale for 7-8 students a year and they fill those spots up before a kid even plays his sophomore season of lacrosse. So if a kid hits his growth spurt at age 15 (which is pretty normal) versus 13-14 (or being a holdback), he might be a stud varsity player and have median or better academics and still have almost no chance to get into his dream school. Well, at least his parents don't have to try to afford $60K a year tuition . . .

His race is certainly why he got into all those schools; in this particular case, however, he seems very deserving.

First LI Female 8th grader committed to BC yesterday.

So the 2020 girls are beating the boys now by 2 to 1 in the class ER if you keeping score at home.

The good news is that if you daughter finishes her freshman year with no offers, she can quickly switch focus to volleyball or field hockey for the D1 opportunity.

so funny how she is already putting BC'24 on her twitter page.. hilarious on some level an eighth grader looking forward to college grad year.. is that weird to anyone else?

I'm waiting for the first '24 / Google Employment '28 Twitter/Instagram page. My 2020 8th grader still hasn't decided which High School he's going to....

LOL. You should see how tough it is for Asians to get in.

No not weird at all. This girl worked her tail off obviously to get this offer. Congrats to her and her family.

I've already discussed it with my daughter, she's almost done with her freshman year and has not gotten any offers yet. She has agreed to just admit that she's not going succeed like all those D1 players and will just settle for D3 and play for MIT instead. It's unfortunate when this realization comes about. I have a feeling that the other parents on the club team will no longer talk to us anymore - I'm not looking forward to the summer travel season.

Well, at least it's not just lacrosse. I see where a Greenwich Ct. 8th grader just committed to Florida State as a QB. Will attend New Canaan HS. And Btw. 8th grader who is 15 years old , 6'1" 170 pounds. (My 8th grader is 13, 5'4 98 lbs) I have to assume before Florida St. would commit, they would have seen him play against similar sized and aged kids?

New Canaan is a bunch of cheaters in lax too bunch of hold back in that area of Ct. but shortly wont that go away. didn't they pass a law about HS sports and ages playing. [lacrosse] go private by jr year so he can still play

Lest not be fooled though, Lax cannot be compared to Football - big money and a business goodluck to this kid

He's actually going private (Brunswick) to public initially. Point taken about the money in college football, but just don't hear about the early recruits much, at least not here in teh northeast.

She used to have a tail? I think you made that up.

My 9 year old is 5'4" 90 pounds. And he is in 3rd grade. You better start stretching your son and feeding him protein drinks.

That's because in football, early recruiting is limited to a handful of exceptional players. The vast majority of players make their final decisions in their senior years.

In lacrosse, you're pretty much out of luck if you're not committed by sophomore year. The system is broken.

Is he the Kyoto University commit for sumo wrestling ?

The game of lacrosse has changed to the point that if a 5'4" 90 pound kid can run and has lacrosse skills he could potentially play. The physical part of the game has been taken out of the game due to player safety and concussions. 25 years ago Spallina could never play his Crush team up a year or two. They would get physically destroyed. I watched opposing teams look at them the wrong way and get penalties. It's only a matter of time before we see a 7th grader verbally commit. It's up to the NCAA to stop this nonsense.

I

It will never happen. The NCAA is a feckless organization. They couldn't care less. As long as they make their money off the basketball tournament, football bowl games and merchandising anything goes. They will never give a program the death penalty again like they did to SMU football back in the 80's, and the colleges know it. They are afraid the colleges will see that they don't need them, so violation enforcement really only comes when the media makes a stink. Read " The System" by Armen Keteyian. It is a great read and shows the nonsense that goes on in college football recruiting and how the NCAA looks the other way. I'm sure basketball is just as bad or worse. If they don't care about the big time sports, they certainly aren't gonna waste time with non-revenue sports like lacrosse.

Any see what Kessenich wrote?
"4 of the 24 McDonalds All American basketball seniors are are undecided. Meanwhile coaches verbal 8th and 9th graders"

I know the bashing will come of Kessenich, but at least he's saying it.