BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Boys 2025 Grads - Mid Atlantic Region

True Baltimore is the best in MD. Everyone else are just pretenders. #wetrainmore

Not Spaulding.

Again….Spalding, NOT Spaulding. It’s not that hard people!

McDonogh has very strong if not top 25 class coming in but will be a couple years to see how impactful the freshman anywhere will be.

I might be biased, but I think there’s a lot of great athletes entering high school. 2025 has been a strong year and it will be fun to watch them over the next few years.

Somebody’s salty their kid stinks! Now your insulting a child lmao.

Along those lines, anyone have any idea what is going to happen to the 25 FCA and 25 Crabs teams? Both seem like they are ready to lose their handful of quality players given their recent performance.

The rest of the 25 Crabs will just reclass like half the team did last summer...fold the 25s and build up one heck of a 26 squad! Maybe they'll even be good enough to get out of pool play at NAL next year.

Not sure why you find that unusual in MD/DC/NoVa area for many players ( especially at private schools ). It has been like that for last 5-6 years and gets more players doing it each year. I wouldnt be surprised that in 5 years the majority of players actually playing/starting in MIAA/IAC will be overage for their grade.

Face of modern lacrosse. All sports have holdbacks/prefirst/reclass, but lacrosse has a crazy higher percentage than all other team sports. While soccer with the most participants in world has the least overage players at youth with their age restrictions.

Soccer's age-based rules should be the norm not the exception, especially since lax is even less of a non-revenue generator for school than soccer. And while the holdback issue isn't as much of a deal for the girls, the transgender thing will absolutely destroy the girls' programs if US Lacrosse doesn't step in and put a stop to all this nonsense instead of waiting for the bad actors to find those loop holes too.

Do you realize how few transgender kids there are that want to compete at high level HS and college sports? They will destroy the girls programs? No shot righty.

Lax needs to go to birth year.
Period.
The grade-based system is idiotic.

They tried not working out....the funny part is people will say it all even's out in HS. Yet kids get recruited off the club teams....look at the 2024 MVP from the National AS event this weekend, he looks 18

Holding back works time and time again. It isnt used by majority of players, but players wanting D1 it is norm in private school to be a overage player playing down.

You have to get over the holdback situation - sorry but when you get to HS and College she doesn’t matter. Our kids routinely play and beat teams with holdbacks and often play kids an age up. Just get used to it and in the end best the team - it’s as easy as that.

What clubs offer 25 teams and when are tryouts?

They will be picking two starters from the yellow helmet team for next year.

Some of the clubs in MD have already finished tryouts. But others are still open. All of these offer 25 club teams, as far as I'm aware:

Bethesda (DC Express) https://www.bethesdalacrosse.org/boys-tryouts
Blue Claws: http://www.blueclawslax.leag1.com/
Cannons: http://www.cannonsselect.com/
Crabs: https://crabslax.com/ContentGeneral.aspx?ContentKey=TryoutsCrabs
FCA: https://fcamdlax.org/boys/about/tryouts/
Hawks: https://www.annapolishawks.com/tryouts
Koopers: https://www.kooperslacrosse.com/
Next Level: https://nextlevelspartans.com/
Preds: https://predatorslacrosse.com/maryland/
Rock: https://www.rocklacrosse.net/page/show/3739945-rock-high-school-program
Rockfish: https://www.rockfishlax.com/tryouts/
Saltwater: https://saltwaterlax.com/upcoming-events/boys-tryouts-open-now/
Team 91: https://maryland.team91lacrosse.com/tryouts/
Team Lacrosse: http://www.teamlacrosseclub.com/events/2436567-2021-22-fall---summer-tryouts
Zingos: https://www.zingoslacrosse.com/Default.aspx?tabid=1347030

True DC (formerly East Side Lacrosse): http://truelacrossemd.leagueapps.com/events/2439165-dc-boys-2021-2022-travel-team-tryouts

Green Turtle https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjK4dKACQ6Q3xZCaUZHjh6INCUvVBAE5Gtx8WdG3TkXiGmZg/viewform

Any feedback on the FCA coach Kacy Kapinos who's moving to the 27s? He seems very reasonable. Wasn't sure how well he gets kids to develop. thanks!

It does matter.. and it works great. Duke used to publish the birthdays of their players. When I was deciding to hold my child back, I went thru Dukes roster. Not ONE player was on age and born after Feb of that year. Pretty amazing stuff. Most on age are born within the first few months of the school year. So of course there are many on age players, just about None that are starting on any top Club, MIAA school born after January of their age for grade.

Now does that mean all holdbacks are starters, of course not. But the stats are what they are.

He does seem reasonable. Bt not sure if he really has a record of developing kids, because he's still so young.
The biggest question is what else he is coaching? Just FCA 27 or will he be splitting his time with other clubs/hs teams?

Still coaching with 25’s, retaining his position at Loyola in addition to his career. Good luck.

Other clubs in the area
PLC- no goalie, players leaving, head coach got fired, and now no head coach
Sidewinders-no coach, no goalie and players leaving
ALC- no goalie, coach is a dad and good luck the only thing that matters on that team is his son
Prostart- STM boys make up most of the team, no coach announced
Mooselax- New program have no idea what they are offering, or who is coaching

What a list of Clubs. A few elite year in year out a few right under year in year out and the rest are all over the place..No matter what, there is a place to play

Ripley taking over the 25 hawks. Be ready for lots of guess players just like the 22’s

Only one coach dad survived, not the best choice for a dad coach but his input will be crucial in keeping the team together. It will be interesting to see who they cut, what the goalie situation will be, who they add and so on. I’m guessing not a lot of change and maybe 2-3 knew boys for the Green team.

This is the new Spalding feeder team. Any other kid that is not a Spalding punk better run away.

The one dad coach left is the king of daddy ball.

Funny how Ripley owns Hogan, Cottle, etc.

Don’t forget King of daddy ball coach and his friends kids on the team. Influenced by politics and impressing the friend crowd. Same kids play while others sitting on the bench are better players.

Someone is bitter his son did not make Spalding's Varsity. Why blame Spalding, look inward, Maybe your son just wasnt good enough. Knitting or Baseball might be an option.

Gotta laugh at all the detest for Spalding and Lidz.
All these people posting about Spalding's superiority isn't coming from REAL Spalding people. It's just haters.
The old guard is irate Spalding crashed their party and figured out you just need to spend money to have a good team.
Mcd has been doing it for the past 30 years. How do you think they transformed themselves from a po-dunk farming school?
Here's hoping Severn, JC and MSJ decide to spend money too. Heads will explode.

Agreed. McD has approx 75 boys/grade in high school. If they did not seriously recruit and scholarship kids they would go back to having average lax teams like they did 20-30 years ago. Their big donor keeps them on the map. Of course, something always suffers, look at their baseball team recently... With the number of boys that play the sport around here there is plenty of pie to go around. MIAA and the student athletes are better off when all schools have a chance to compete. How about ALL schools entering ALL their sports teams in the same MIAA division and not picking and choosing based on the sport and how good/bad they are.... There are a handful of schools that practice this.

Why would you want one league for the whole school? There are too many sports for that to work.
Outside of CH and McD, pretty much every other MIAA school would have major issues with this. CH has the huge enrollment to boost its success and MCD has the recruiting angle. All other schools flow pretty freely, depending on the sport and year.
I think allowing programs to move every 2 years is good for parity. If a school knows they have a strong or weak class coming, they can move accordingly. I think that's a good thing.

Well into tryouts for all the area clubs now. Some are over and invites have gone out.

Which teams are getting better? Heard the Crabs team had a lot of defections? Is this true? Why? Hawks a lot of turnover? What about the closer to DC teams? Next Level, MadLax?

Anyone want to take a shot at ranking the teams at this point?

Crabs 2025 had 17-18 kids get cut or leave. King Crab cut starters and plans to bring kids in from out if state. Right now team has 12-13 kids on the roster.

That was done to make room for the BL boarders and hurt competing schools by cutting their players but keeping BL players. The boarding school is 100% about getting more out-of-state and Canadian athletes in, that’s why it’ll be the only 7 day boarding school in the area.

So I guess it wants to be like some of the schools in Connecticut, like a Taft?

Another uninformed post by someone who wants to pretend to know what’s going on at a school that they have nothing to do with. BL, like Calvert School ( not CH) who have a strong international educational program. The dorms will give those students a chance to come to the states to continue their education in person. Of course there will be some lacrosse, football, soccer, basketball as well as all other sports will have access to the dorms. If I’m not mistaken one of the first two boarders is a violinist who will attend BL but will also be able to attend the Peabody Institute. Every private school continues to try to create something that separates them from the academics offerings of the other schools. A school like Gilman judges their success on the scores their students get on the SATs and list list of schools their graduates chose to attend not about the success of their athletic teams.... remember they blew up their football program which was top 5 in the country at the time because it didn’t fit their academic mission.

This is the densest post I’ve ever read on this board. You can’t pick what level you want to play in each year so you can have a winning record . A school like St P would be moving up and down every year because they can’t be consistent winners in any sport. The last 5-6 years they would have been better playing in the C conference playing teams like Friends and Curley.