BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums NEW JERSEY LACROSSE NEW JERSEY FORUM Top Boy's Club Teams in New Jersey

Different story with the older grades. I believe most of those kids commit as a 2024 so they are taking the PG year. They wouldn't play with the 2023 for recruiting class purposes if they were goin to PG anyways. It makes sense, it isn't LE exclusive.

The kid going to UVA for the 2024's graduates this year from his high school. Probably should be moved to the 2023 list unless he is going a PG year.

He’s recruited as a 24. Worked out well for him and he will PG this year. It’s the perfect example of the scenario. Plays 2024s with the intention of PG so that he can be recruited as just that.

Summit runs a system offense and zone defense that doesn’t highlight individual players so they rarely generate superstars. That said, they do fairly well with commits yo high academic d1 and d2, especially Patriot league and NESCACs.[/quote]

I can shed some light here as we lived in Summit for 15 years and my son and daughter came up through the youth program. First, I would argue that Summit runs the best youth program in the state (ML a close second). Summit is a larger town with a rich lacrosse tradition so there is no shortage in talent in each grade. However, the caveat is that every year they will lose a large chunk to private schools. Every year is different but some years it is more than half the best players. Looking at my son's 8th grade "A" team, the high school breakdown was as follows: SHS: 7 Delbarton: 7 Pingry: 3 Lawrenceville: 1. The players who went to SHS played for the futures team, and the private school kids played for Patriot, LE, and BBL. Those were really the only options at the time; the number of clubs nowadays always surprises me. In fact, my son played on one of the inaugural Steps club teams for boys, at the time it was called the Steps Futures All-Star team and it was made up primarily of the best players from the Summit and ML futures teams. My understanding was that it was started as a way to entice the best players to stay in the futures programs and not go to one of the private clubs. The renowned Steps girls team was a good model to follow and the Summit and ML players provided a strong foundation. It is interesting now to see how the landscape of club allegiances has shifted due to coaching changes, for example Delbarton/Steps and SHP/Tri-State. Between Kovachik, Davidson, and Flynn, Steps has the best collection of coaches without a doubt.

The zone defense itself was designed to extract more out of less talent, it was famously born during the 2009 season. While I agree with you that Summit has not produced many superstars recently, this was not the case during the heyday. And the biggest star from Summit in 2009 was actually Delbarton's best player, a top recruit and UA All-American who went on to be an All-Ivy middie at Harvard. NJ overall had a lot of talent that year and had made a big splash that summer after winning the UA underclass tourney, a very big deal back then for recruiting. Anyways, after losing 10-6 to Delbarton in the season opener, Summit devised and implemented the zone as a way to neutralize Delbarton's one on one advantage. The rest is history of course and Summit would not lose again until nearly three years later. Delbarton would not beat Summit again until in 2012, after losing 9-4 to Summit in the regular season they decided to play zone themselves. I put the link to the game below, truly fool to see as it was the first and last time I have seen a Delbarton team run zone for an entire game. Delbarton's best player that year was also a middie from Summit who went on to win two national titles at Duke, starting to see a trend here?

2012 TOC Semi- Delbarton 5 - Summit 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcAXs4mlpCw&ab_channel=ChuckRuebling

This is not true...BBL did not have anyone from the 2023 class this summer and Tri State had one reclass where he actually reclassed and is a junior.

Nobody would argue that Summit and ML have 2 of the best youth programs in the state. They lose half of their talent to prep schools, but their HS teams are still ridiculous.

The question we're trying to answer is this . . . how does Summit and ML beat SHP, Delbarton, etc with a fraction of the number of D1 recruits?

2 possible explanations that I see:
- the coaching at Summit/ML is far superior to the coaching at these private schools so they can win with far less talent
- the talent gap is not that big, but the recruiting support and visibility provided at the private schools/clubs enables similarly talented kids go to better colleges

What's your take?

will be interesting to see how it plays out for Summit going forward their freshman class lost only 1 A team player to private school and the '26's are one of the strongest grades they have had in some time

Seems like BBL is taking over.

They play more as a team.. look at the 2025/So class at Delbarton. Great players but parents and kids don't like each other.

That is a really interesting take on the situation. With schools like Delbarton, SHP and DB, parents are putting their kids there for lacrosse, so I suspect that the competition must be lot more heated in regards to playing time, etc.

with bigger name coaches (giarrusso, former SHP HC and calandra, former Chatham HC) moving on to smaller schools like MKA and St. Joes Metuchen respectively, why wouldn't kids want to go there and play 4 years of varsity lacrosse, potentially be more happy there and still get recruited the same amount? Kids at SHP get CUT from freshman teams - many are talented that make it and don't sniff the field til their junior/senior years. Giarrusso and Calandra have had some pretty big names recruited to the next level at prior jobs, club kids included.

I love it when summit and lakes beat big privates like delbarton. They both lose a few studs every year to privates and still beat them a good percentage of the time. kids who leave lakes and summit do it for reasons other than lacrosse. But kids from mediocre to weak lacrosse high schools often go private for lacrosse purposes to get more exposure to better coaching and competition.

Bravo! Or your kid doesn’t quit because the lax team all do drugs, which someone I knew experienced

Or came home after 1 year because he was burnt out

Or has awful mental health because him
and his parents never focused on the right things

Huh?

What is the general opinion on STEPS? Their teams seem good but not great at HS level. Their coaching staff has to be the best and its not even close, Kovachik (delbarton, NJ HOF), Giarusso (MKA, SHP), Webster ( Pingry NJ HOF), Davidson (Sumit, NJ HOF).. and more but you get the point. Do they just not play the cut throat game in HS and cut and poach kids to get better. IS that what you have to do to be elite?

Steps is a solid single A type of program (B in LI terms). Their girls program is elite. They don’t attract the best players because they don’t compete in the best tournaments and don’t give the kids the best exposure. They work around the “futures” programs that some towns like summit still have so that makes them more attractive to those towns’ players. That said, very few elite players from towns like summit play for steps these days. Years ago before all the big clubs like BBL were around, steps was a much more competitive program.

Thanks for response. "They don't play in the best tournaments". IS that a chicken and Egg thing? if they were better they would play at those tournaments? or are they not invited, or do they make a conscious decision not to go to the top tournaments. just wondering . thanks..

That's the challenge a lot of these second tier clubs have. If they enter the big time tourneys and get smacked around nobody's happy, kids leave, and it's hard to attract new kids. But if they don't enter the big tourneys, it's hard to retain the best players. They will eventually leave for LE/BBL/TS to play with better with/against better kids in the top tourneys with the most visibility.

where are all the "it doesn't matter who you play for" dads?

I’ve said this several times in the past on this forum: play for the best club team you can make assuming you are getting plenty of playing time. The better teams will eventually get more exposure to college coaches but that doesn’t help you if you are sitting on the bench.

I think that a lot of the "it doesn't matter where you play" comments are directed more at the higher level teams that play in better tournaments with comparable exposure, i.e. LE, TS, BBL, Riot, BS, etc.. I do not think that this extends to the next tier of teams. You cannot play on a a lower level team in B level NJ and PA tournaments and expect to get any exposure.

Any recruiting updates? Any other kids committing from NJ?

They will trickle in from now on. LE goalie committed to Lafayette and Tri State had an attack commit to Utah and a middle commit to Holy Cross late last week. There are still some really good players left from NJ. Fall Ball has started and that will get kids looked at who are still good but not rated as 5,4,3, stars on NLF or Inside Lacrosse

What happened to the Mad Dog 2025 team, they went 0-2-1 in the b-division. They have some good players on that team.

They lost two games by two goals and Team Ten was pretty darn good. Missing two impact players. They are a top 40 team, not a top 20. Stop trolling.

Its Fall Lacrosse! People are questioning team results! Classic!

Just an opportunity to get a stick in your hand and play a little lacrosse, results are meaningless...only person that should care (and not about results) is in an uncommitted 2024

How many Delbarton Goalies are committed?

I believe 3 are committed.

More that can play on the field at one time.

This is true, but as a goalie or a fogo, the opportunities are few and far between. Not a lot of slots for these kids, so I guess that you have to live with the opportunities that come along. They are going to face the same issue in college, so better to learn to deal with it now.

The kid works his rear off to only start one year in High School and then never gets on the field in college. Yes, he is playing D1 but all that work for 1 year of playtime. Play for your town team, start for 2 to 3+ years, and still go to the D1 school. And there are girls at your school lol

I guess the real question is, why do you care. This is a decision that the kid, and presumably his parents, have made. I assume that it does not affects your life in any way, so perhaps you should focus your energy elsewhere. I suspect that your reaction would be much different if another poster were commenting on the decisions made by you or your kid.

Is it just me or has there been much less conversation and vitriol comments since the 2023's moved on? I know there is still negativity but its really quite here lol.

LE [Censored]! BBL is the best! Is that better?

Seems like all of the top programs have gotten off to a great start with 2024 recruiting. Is this the top NJ recruiting class in the last few years? Don't recall so many NJ kids going Ivy, ACC, Big10.

Not really Towermommy is the censor & wont let the posts on about last weekends tragedy!

Have you seen the BBL brackets they're playing in? 😂

Yeah, as if this forum isn't papered with an insane amount of BBL - LE - Mad Dog - Towermen 24, 25, & 26 nonsense...

There goes the whole 2023 theory

I agree this 2024 class is doing really well. There there are still a lot of high end kids still out there. I know a bunch have been on visits this week after the NAL. This weekend with the NLF and the NLF uncommitted showcase will get the uncommitted a lot of looks, however those boys are gonna be really cold!!!!