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

You are kidding right? Fall Ball, better competition and probably coaching, more playing time for the other kids, the team gets the same money regardless of attendance, 7th grade lacrosse. If the other kids shine in his absence, maybe they get more time later.

Nothing should happen to the kid. He's the client and should do what he wants. In 7th grade the boys are starting to want a little adventure (mostly meet knew kids and DEF try a new coach) and play different teams. I mean our team misses a lot of fall ball players to rec football....what's worse?

Welcome to the new world order. Every kid will soon have a local club, a national team, and a box team. Conflicts will become more frequent in the fall and summer. Prepare to give away all your money to lacrosse.

Coach has every right to be a bit annoyed.

However it will come down to how good the kid is. As someone said before - if he’s a dominant player then meh. All will be forgiven.

But like was previously mentioned if the kid is average, then I’m sure you can guess how that will turn out.

True came in Hot and has really flopped at a program. Their director needs some direction on how to manage a club. Their coaches are mediorce and come and go - many don't even coach a full season. I'm surprised that the True organization has not sent in one of their top executives to get this local True organization straightened out.

A lot of folks would say that missing fall tournament to play for a "better" travel team is worse than missing to play an in-season sport such as football. Teammates and coaches will perceive it as a slap. I can hear it now, "I guess we're good enough for Shane anymore." Shane's parents may get the cold shoulder too the next time he decides to slum it with his run of the mill, ordinary team, that families are paying 4,000 per year to play on.

Does VLC have two teams this year or lose some players to Madlax/Next Level?

It's not a good market for True because MD is not Illinois, where players focus on their school team and True is just a bunch of all-star teams. Illinois is 60,000 square miles and True has almost no real competition there in terms of clubs, marketing, etc. Maryland is 12,000 square miles and there are clubs at every level that are happy to eat True's lunch year-to-year by recruiting away dissatisfied customers. So many other games in town, from Hawks at the top, rec clubs at the bottom, and teams like 91, Sidewinders, Predators in the middle to capture all kinds of different families and players after they get salty over their son's failure to improve at True.

Oh well. Families are beholden to their children. Clubs have no loyalty. Yet some insist on families being loyal to them. It’s silly.

Now the kid might look silly if he goes and plays for some national team and enjoys the bench and loses his position on his club team - but that’s the risk you run.

Totally agree. But don't underestimate how badly parents want their son's team to be good, and how pissed they will be when they get to a tournament and Dads on the sideline in their quarter zips start asking "wait a minute, where's Shane" and then they figure out that he is off playing for a hot stuff national team, and meanwhile his regular team is losing to MadLax or some other team that the Dads can't stand. If Shane is a dominant goalie, FOGO, or leading scorer (exactly the type of players that the National teams try to pick off) his absence will be noticed and discussed ad nauseum at the tent and the hotel bar. Just saying.

Lots of teams relatively new to the 2028 scene at the Circuit next week, but I'm expecting to see a lot of familiar faces with players from the top traditional programs hopping on these squads.

Which of these national teams are the DMV area kids playing for?

Eighteen, Red Hots, Project MW, UNRL, etc.

IDK, it’s all fairly relative. These are 7th graders and they and their parents are customers, not pro athletes under contracts. So if they wanted to play in a tournament, that tbh looks pretty cool, I don’t see a problem. Also, don’t most of these local club teams feed into national programs anyway in some shape or form? It is also fairly customary for other clubs to display professional courtesy to other clubs and coaches and check with coaches and directors before talking to kids about playing for another team, so it is probably not something the coaches would not know about beforehand. However, if you are a person who believes that the only good lacrosse that gets played in the United States is in Maryland then you should take it as a personal affront and post about it on this very forum.

I don't think the parents should give 2effs if their club coach gets mad at them for playing 1 off tournaments. If they try to take it out on the kid, leave. There are plenty of clubs in the DMV and you can be certain 1 solid/long term player leaving will lead to others leaving. That's how it works.

Clubs need to watch it. This is when kids get tired of their [Censored] and leave. It's killed many teams before.

If Shane's parents are true youth sports parents, they don't care.

You seriously think that the coach or director of a Circuit team will call the coach or director of a player's regular team as a courtesy before talking to the player or his family? Let's see how that discussion would go:

Circuit coach: "Hello Coach, Mike Smith here, I am coaching this really awesome Circuit team, and we were hoping it would be okay to borrow your starting goalie, two starting poles, and your lefty attack for a big tournament this weekend. I know you have your own tournament, but your guys will get exposed to exceptionally elite competition and coaching, and they will have a blast. You good with that?"

Regular Travel Coach: "No problem! I want my players getting reps anywhere they can, and you can coach them up better than I ever could myself. Thanks for the courtesy call, really appreciate it. Here are the names of a couple other players who you may be worth a look too. Good luck this weekend, bring home a trophy!"

Sure, I bet those discussions are happening right now across the lacrosse world.

Most kids playing in the Circuit don't start for top teams. That is the whole reason they are playing in fall Circuit tourney. Good for them for getting extra reps and good for the Circuit for providing that opportunity. It's not a money grab, it's filling a market need.

Color me skeptical but I have difficulty seeing most of these Circuit “national teams” cobbling together a true all-star roster in the Fall. By that I mean a team that would be highly competitive at a mid- to top-end summer tourney. Will they find players to fill the squad? Of course. Is it going to be the kind of quality competition that a star Baltimore or DMV player should have FOMO over? Highly doubtful. The fact that MadLax, 2Way, True, or other quality national teams aren’t participating is telling. Sure, BBL is legit. But that’s about it.

This is in accurate.

It should be interesting to see how many NLF players are on Circuit teams. I saw a number of them already at a prior event this fall. The traditional all-star teams like True and ML Nationals kids have already joined teams like 3D and Red Hots. These families run from team to team as fast as they can. Red Hots had a number of Nationals helmets out there. I guess they are all figuring out which roster gives them the best chance to play and win.

There's a few kids playing for Nationals who aren't even starters on average club teams in the Baltimore area.

True makes a lot of sense outside of the mid-Atlantic and NY, in areas where lacrosse is even more of a back-burner, niche sport so it may be difficult for a local program to get to any kind of scale or provide an opportunity for players to play at top tournaments.

It has to be a much harder task in markets where local teams already have a strong presence and where enough kids play to let those local teams compete at a high level just with kids from a relatively small geographic area (and maybe a couple who drive or fly in special on occasion).

You've gotta think that the ML-Nationals lawsuit situation and the related bad publicity turned off some parents of Elite players who might otherwise consider joining.

Where is FCA playing this Fall? Do they still have 3 teams?

Nationals stepped on their own foot with the Circui thing. They had a really good model, changed it and a bunch of parents took their kids off. It didn't stop those same parents from seeking out teams like True, 18 and Red Hots. Nationals got worse and those teams got better.

What lawsuit?

ML parent. No idea what's going on other than Nationals regularly reach out to all the ML kids. Fwiw

I know they still have the Blue and White teams. Not sure about the out reach team.

Nationals doesn’t appear to be sustainable.

The model is taxing travel wise. It’s insanely expensive. And the output is about a AAAA HoCo team.

The elite kids who used to play have just about all left it alone so what you have is a national team that is about as good as BLC.

It’s probably still a really good option for non hot bed kids though. Definitely fulfills a niche of getting those kids east to play in top tournaments.

Football players are second tier athletes.
1st Tier: Basketball Tennis maybe soccer
2nd tier: Football hockey rugby Track and Field
3rd Tier: Lacrosse baseball Volleyball

Very good analysis, honestly. Whether it's (and the other "National" teams) sustainable (remember, nationally, the sport is exploding) is largely based on how they treat their customers (parents and players). If the squad's overall quality goes down to the HoCo AAAA level, that can be spun to recruit newly identified elite players "hey there's tons of opportunity for you here." If it becomes more elite for awhile, the AAAA stable of parents and kids still needs to be tended to because you need their money and you need their ability to show up last-minute to back up your elite players, when you realize you only have 13, two days before a tournament.

That the national team model is so transactional is just reflective of club lax in general, and could definitely be the downfall of any of the teams including Nationals. Parents are bombarded with fees and extra "opportunities" to play and work out with these teams and they cut the check, and hopefully there is some value added (far from a guarantee). By the same token, families that can afford this $2K+ expenditure on top of the $3K+ they are spending per kid on lax per year, have absolutely no loyalty to the national teams either. They can go to the next team and pay $2K+ again.

Communications from the lax program and customer service are key. More than just emails about "team store just opened, new helmet drop!" Or "Come train on a cold wet field on saturday for $175/hour." Or "Come get evaluated for $350 by some coaches who don't even carry clipboards, let alone know the kids' names."

That’s a good one! Maybe soccer??! Sounds like you are a tennis player? Lol

What a random and childish post.

Also bigly wrong.

This would only be true in terms of 40 yard dash and shuttle times.

If you add upper body strength measures of athleticism (not just dead lifts, either), and ability to perform with physical contact (definitively NOT soccer or tennis), the chart would flip except for basketball (first) and volleyball (last, with tennis).

I think this Board has hit an all time low.
To get back on track, I have a son who is a holdback, will somebody attack me please?

Thisnis accurate. Played them at Naptown this summer and they would have gotten rolled in HoCo Elite division. And yeah, good way for kids not already on Elite teams to get Elite exposure.

No problem....my public school, on age kid who hasn't hit puberty is better than your 14 year old hold back who was given Uncle Jerry's old Range Rover. Hit the Wall!

I'm sorry, the answers we were looking for are "Quarter Zip" and "You Know Nothing, Clown!" The lost of today's contest has to count the #1 of D1 commits who didn't pan out, from the western terminus of Lake Ave, to the intersection of Putty Hill and LaSalle. Bonus points for including public schools (Poly, Towson).

All this and they had 7th graders playing at 6th grade tournaments last season.

Classy

I know you worship at the alter of crappy American football. But they aren’t nearly as athletic as you think. The avg tennis player is about the same size speed and stamina as an NBA PG or SG 6’1” - 6’5” can run and jump all day. Same for soccer. The list of guys who played high level D1 basketball and maybe to the NFL HOF and didn’t get a sniff at the NBA is longer than a stick. Tennis has no clock soccer has two subs. The avg nfl non QB plays 7 mins of game time per game. Do some homework

Julius Peppers UNC basketball HOF
Tony Gonzalez Cal Basketball HOF
Antonio Gates Kent St HOF
Terrell Owens TSU HOF

The list of guys who couldn’t make in the nba and are NFL HOFers is long. Soccer tennis and basketball athletes are almost identical at the smaller basketball player sizes.