BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Boys 2028 Grads - Mid Atlantic Region

You know these comments regarding lacrosse players not being elite athletes really is getting some over-zealous dads' blood boiling....so funny. You want further proof how how self promoting (and dense) lacrosse clubs are (and I'm guilty of putting several kids through it)? Just look at their social media posts.....defining kids who weigh maybe 170 lbs as "beasts, studs, or animals". I agree with the poster from above.....lacrosse players are 2nd tier athletes behind football, basketball and even hockey and track and field. You wanna see some serious speed.....go to some of the track meets around the Bowie, MD area. If those kids played lacrosse our kids would be playing pickleball and squash at <insert any PG county country club here>.

The same could be said about baseball players. Of course the athletism to play D1 Football/Basketball is a different level from lacrosse. However, there are a lot of lacrosse teams that have a kid or 2 that are athletic enough to play Collegiate Football or Basketball.

The 2028 thread is running a dangerous trend of reasonable, well informed, and adult-level comments.

Need a Meathead Dad (played 1 year at JUCO before riding the bench at a D2 program that has since been dissolved) to chime in with a "You Know Nothing, Clown, Scram!" comment to get us back to the regular tone around here.

Ha! Well said.

Does anyone know how youth baseball works with respect to age vs grade?
I guess it probably doesn't matter as much due to the lack of contact, but I could be wrong.

Or is it only in youth lacrosse is it acceptable for a hardworking 12yr old to have his head kicked in by a private school, 14yr old holdback who practices 1/4 of the amount of time.

"He turns 13 in June"

Head kicked in. Exaggerate much.

There are two governing orgs in youth baseball, Little League (LLWS) and Babe Ruth League (Ripken) depending on where you live or choose to play. LL age cutoff is 9/1 and BRL is 5/1 which results in split grade teams for the most part. After age 12 the 5/1 cutoff is universal. Most elite baseball tournaments allow for age and grade so you will have levels that look like 2026/15U, 2027/14U, and so forth. So the good news is there’s still a place for 16 y/o Johnny to play down against 14U competition. Most club teams in the area are grade based and yes holdbacks are trending but not nearly to the level in lacrosse. What’s interesting is that rosters & player profiles with ages are readily available on baseball tournament websites, unheard of to see a roster let alone an age on a Lax tourney site.

Congrats to the PLL ticket salesman who thought up that pitch to get some kids from out of town to come to the game. BTW - Those kids aren't WSYL champs. They won the Lacrosse World Series Championship. The difference is WSYL was on ESPN and people actually cared. LWSC is on Youtube and not nearly as competitive.

There are tons of reclasses on AAU basketball Earl.

There are no reclasses in soccer or hockey. Its on age where its fair. Unlike private school, elitist, youth club lacrosse where rich people send their 14yr old's to beat up on 12yr old's.

Do those AAU reclasses have 3.9 GPAs at prep schools when they were on-age, and have standardized test scores in the top 25% nationally (as the stereotypical lax reclass does)? Generally, I suspect not.

You accidentally let your racism show a bit. Nice job.

Sour sour grapes

Congratulations to that team

Can’t wait to watch this year

Today USA Club Lacrosse announced the initial movement to change from Class to Age. Get your popcorn ready because this will be moving fast. If your kid is a holdback or even double hold-back get ready to take a seat on the hard cheap pine. This will even the playing ground for many and should keep this game alive for the long run.

Sure hope it happens. My kid is on age, and while I don’t care that he’s playing against older kids— I’d certainly rather see him playing amongst his peers in age!

You must not be watching the games. This is exactly what the issue is.. Not wins/losses.

I love 2022. The guy who assumes all basketball players are a specific race, calls me out for saying basketball prospects have lower grades than lax players. Golf clap.

If you think the top 10, or 100, or 1000 basketball prospects have similar grades and test scores as the top 10/100/1000 lax prospects, I don't know what to do for you. The data is quite easy to assemble.

Now scram, Clown. You know nothing!

Got awful quiet here since us club lacrosse put out the survey questioning the problem with holdbacks

The scam is over. Hard to ignore the numbers in the poll. Going to Age in 2023. Reality check for a lot of people.

The IG post on the topic was like the Upside Down and demonstrates that it's just a show. Numerous coaches who actively seek out holdbacks over on-age kids were sharing that post to support on-age kids, and parents/coaches who have literally held their own kids back specifically for sports, were all over the comments about how holdbacks aren't fair. Look at some of the accounts and coaches' names. Hiding in plain sight.

It is strictly kabuki. Nothing will change, but they know to be responsive to their customers, they have to appear concerned about it.

"Let's get rid of holdbacks. But You First!" in other words.

Beat the dead horse some more

I think most people feel like they’ll believe it when they see it. Plus this age group only has one more year of middle school. So this supposed change will only really help the younger grades.

If they were actually going to do anything - it wouldn’t be sparked by an Instagram poll.

And besides if it ever did happen, the would probably start with the class of 2040 or something lol.

Give the current coaches and club directors ample time to get their holdback kids and nephews/nieces long out of the club landscape.

Anyone playing in the Maryland Fall Lacrosse Tourney on Oct. 16th?

You are giving club coaches too much credit saying they know their customers. If they did, owners and/or owner-coaches wouldn't have dad coaches who play their less skilled sons over other players who are in fact the actual clients while the coaches' kids play for free. It's been discussed in this forum before, but it is rampant at Madlax and I can tell you the "daddy ball" pisses the parents off WAY more than holdbacks.

Response: Well yes that is a good point.

Show me a sport, any sport, that isn’t dependent on parent coaches. I don’t coach but this is just one of many factors that parents must weigh when joining any team. Without parent coaches there wouldn’t be enough teams to satisfy the demand. Maybe true that in many cases sons are given preferential treatment but that dynamic exists in all sports at all levels.

Yup.
Holdbacks are bigger problem than daddy coaches.

At the Club lacrosse prices, not to mention the money they make in the tournaments and selling swag, etc there should be zero dad coaches. It's not rec. I could live with a dad assistant coach with no control over players, etc, but that won't happen. The clubs let the dads coach because it saves them money......but it hurts the other 20-25 kids on the team that are actually paying the bills. It's a growing problem. Holdbacks are a debatable issue, but I don't think daddy ball vs. cost is one. It's a cancer at a lot of clubs.

I believe Brian Kelly is a dad/coach. So is Danowski (Duke). So is Brian Spallina. This isn’t a notIntelligent argument, it’s just an argument founded on ignorance. URBWN4

How are having older kids play against younger kids pre-HS a debatable issue?
In HS, fine, we get it. But do you really want to watch your 13 yr old son run around 11 yr old's?
Where's the integrity?

Phhhhhhhhhht. It's an overgeneralization but it is certainly not an ignorant argument. If you are paying more than about $1500/year for your son to play ball, having a "Dad Coach" is more likely to be a red flag than a bonus, and everyone knows that.

Typical 21st Century American thinking "Oh it has to be A or B!" Really?

The fired 2029 Crabs coach (now at True) is a dad coach. Search the forums for that insane saga.
Team 91 currently has 30+ kids on roster including 3 sons of coaches. Should work out great.
Koopers was full of Dad coaches, and folded.
Millon is a dad coach, making sure for 10+ years the ball goes through his sons' hands. At the expense of others. It has been a success (of sorts).
Madlax has dad coaches, and the ML Dadz cannot stop talking about the effect it has on the squad.

Brian Kelly in his role at FCA has built a system where other players (who aren't his sons) must fit into the system that showcases his sons, or be cut. There are at least "a few" former and current FCA midfielders who have the same level of talent as Kelly's 2028 son. And yet some are/were buried 18 spots deep on the FCA white roster because there can only be one.

And in fact some of the best and worst 2028 FCA coaches have been dad coaches over the past few years!

It's complicated, but it's usually NOT GOOD.

Who the heck could you get to coach youth lax if they have no skin in the game? How much time would someone put into coaching for very little pay? Some dad coaches are quality coaches. Some are not. That is for owners and parents to decide.

Obviously dad coaches have a down side but if you take 91 2028 venom the coaches sons on that team are actually good. Every team is heavy on the friend of a friend gets the playing time. It [Censored] for sure but if a coach wants to win he’s going to put the better players on the field.

Yes, the new 91 parents are in for a fun season with 30 + kids and dad coaches.

The dad coach supporters forget that it's a part time job and most of them can do other things within the club like NOT COACHING THEIR KID or teaching clinics etc. If you are paying $2-3k a year with 20 to 25 kids on the team it should work. The vast majority of skilled kids over the years leave over dad coaches vs. holdbacks. Period. Look at ML 2024 class as a recent example which has been well documented in this forum....one of the most dominant club teams ever until 9th grade....then a bunch of their best players left because of it....and these kids could go (and are /including Inside Lacrosse's #1 pick) anywhere for college. As noted above, "it's complicated, but it's usually NOT GOOD."

Don’t know if they have 30+ on the roster but if true and new kids don’t play…run for the hills your kid will not get better and will get cut when the next new thing comes along.

Say what you want -

But *almost* every youth club 2028 team I can think of that doesn’t have at least one dad coach is terrible.

I can't believe I'm defending the 91 MD operation but here it goes. At 91 you play, or you don't (50% of kids don't...at all). The club prides itself on not cutting kids and giving kids the A-B-C's of "I need to see you do these 3 things, if you actually want to play in games here." That (in theory, not practice) creates the opportunity for "player development" they always brag about. Of course, in reality the system is only sometimes a meritocracy. Out of the 50% of kids who don't play, about 1/3 quit the sport entirely (or drop to lower level rec club teams, then quit), 1/3 improve and actually get playing time the following year, and 1/3 are content (or their parents are) to have their kid on the "91 practice team" as a status symbol.

Mid-July 2022 - 30 players rostered + 2 guest players
Mid-July 2022 - 8 players from Kelly Post added in a (very quiet and non-inclusive) package deal, no tryout required.
Late July 2022 - Tryouts. 2? new kids added. Curious how many left the team. But I assume the roster size is still 30 and not 40.

Coach here. That's a laughable basis for a side hustle, "skin in the game." It is hardly a full time job or even a half time job, first of all (Sure, from March 15 - May 15 it approaches 20 hours/week). With each club team teaming bringing in $50K - $65K in dues, if a coach is getting "very little pay" (compared to other side hustles), that's his failure to negotiate. And once you have taken the money, if you don't like the terms or don't want to work hard, that's its own problem (a common one in this country, of course). If your son's coach is not working hard (practice starts late, coach forgot to verify roster for the league or tournament, coach forgets to bring balls to practice, coach just lets the kids scrimmage for entire practice), RUN.

I can get $3K teaching a sports management or sports trainer course at the community college (2 classes per year for $6K), or I can get $8K-$10K coaching a 4A or elite club that allows me to actually stretch my legs, spend time on the field with a stick in my hand. The choice is a no brainer. My "skin in the game" is performing as a coach so the kids improve, see some success on the field, and (important) so I get to keep the job next year!

The Hoco Elite 2028 Champions have zero dad coaches. However they are ML28's daddy.