BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums NORTHEAST LACROSSE BOTC MAIN FORUM (LI, CT, WC) Long Island Yellow Jackets Lacrosse

Wow...and this is coming from a parent who has been through the process all the way through a top d1 college...as good as you think your daughter and her friends are..when they get out of pee wee.. (below jv level) you are going to find as you travel around the country that your team will be the ones going for ices and looking silly. Let the girls grow..develop and try not to make fun of the other girls, they may be the one that takes the last full ride on your daughters dream college team. Your kid is talented not you so just relax there is a life outside of long island pee wee lacrosse.

who said that the girls not playing Yellow Jackets are non-athletic? Mark my words....some of the girls that you consider non-athletic now, will be some of your best players in a couple of years. That is if the coaches have not completely turned them off to the game because of their selfish agendas

Most recent updates for the Class of 2012 from the Yellow Jackets

Blue: Lindsay Alfano (Hauppauge) Hofstra
Blue: Darcy Messina (St Anthonys) Florida
Blue: Michaela Aymong (Northport) Richmond
Blue: Stephanie Peragallo (Hauppauge) Notre Dame
Blue: 2013 Maggie Bill ( St Anthony’s) UNC
Blue: Taylor Rantfle (Hauppauge) UVA
Blue: Katie Boden (Shoreham) UMass
Gold: Christine Rienzo (Hauppauge) Siena
Blue: Paige Bonomi (Northport) USC
Gold: Diane Rienzo (Hauppauge) Siena
Blue: Courtney Boyd (Locust Valley) Louisville
Blue/Gold: Kelly Anne Sherlock (Cold Spring) Yale
Gold: Meghan Breen (sacred Heart) UMass
Blue: Chelsey Sidaras (Floyd) Fairfield
Blue: Alexandra Bruno (Garden City) Princeton
Gold: Erica Sklar (Friends) Villanova
Blue: Nicole Dangellis ( Smithtown East) Yale
Gold: Mary Pat Theofield (Northport) UMass
East: Dene Demartino (Eastport) Hopkins
Gold: Jenna Vinci (Hauppauge) Binghamton
Blue: Caroline Delyra (Bayshore) USC
Gold/Blue: Colleen Wright (Huntington) Iona
Blue: Catherine Dickinson (Garden City) UPenn
Green: Marina Venezia (Mt Sinai) Lehigh
Blue: Christina Esposito (West Babylon) Northwestern
Blue: Alyssa Ferro (North Babylon) Towson
Blue: Jenna Fuchs (Garden City) Fairfield
Gold; Julide Giray (Hauppauge) Binghamton
Green: Meghan Gulmi (Syosset) Cinncinati
Gold: Meaghan Kollmeier (Northport) UMASS
Green/Gold: Emily Lucas (Island Trees) Monmouth
Blue: Emily Maier (Sayville) High Point
Blue/Gold: Megan McDonald (Garden City) Georgetown

BOTC Industries will respond to this post with a summary of the previous dozen notes.

This has been an extremely interesting conversation and exchange on many levels. The discussion illustrates the challenges of a team with players still on the recreational level and more advanced level seeking more from the game and experience.

BOTC Industries thinks that this debate centers around three issues that have been raised.

First, the Yellow Jackets do not have an elite season that is restricted to the June/July tournament window. The thought that by playing in March the Yellow Jackets are impinging on the town team season is incorrect. Certainly, a town team can extend its season well into the summer months and so too, the Yellow Jackets can be playing in the Spring. What you are seeing is that lacrosse is slowly by surely increasing its scope to being multiseasonal and will likely be a year-round commitment in the next decade. Ring fencing the two types of teams, town and elite, into months of play is a convenient organization, but not written or practiced in fact.

Second, there is a debate as to whether the Mount Sinai coaches had the responsibility to even attend the Wounded Warrior event with their town team. Since there was no tournament schedule shared with the town team parents, the coaches clearly had no responsibility to attend. Could they have held their team responsibility in higher esteem? BOTC Industries thinks that they could have. Note however that several posts have indicated that an effort was in fact made to organize the Mount Sinai team for the Wounded Warrior event. The number of players who could not or would not be able to commit for the weekend seemed high resulting in not enough players to field the full team. At some point, the effort was just no longer worth the reward.

Third, some children/players have both the ability and desire to play beyond the town team level. While the debate has dwindled down to "athletic vs. non-athletic" players, the issue is really one of desire to play in a more competitive setting and the ability to do (secondarily). The ability could be skill based or financial, but either case, the desire is the primary driver. It would appear that many of the Mount Sinai players do not have the desire to move to a higher, next step program. As a result, the town team is being torn (as many are at these ages) between moving on and staying together. Long term, as you will see, the answer is to move on although when you are going through the situation, that decision is not always clear.

As BOTC said, playing for the Yellow Jackets (or any elite team) is a question of both desire and ability (skill/financial). We think that there are many athletic players who, for one reason or the other, do not take the next lacrosse-step after a town team.

For those that have both the desire and ability, we should encourage those moves as part of their growth in lacrosse. That is not a selfish perspective particularly considering the points in our previous post.

The parents of a kid that is not athletic should be smart enough to direct there kid to do something else which they may be much more successful.My observations over the years with my older kids clearly showed me that the kids that could not catch and pass the lax ball in 3rd grade still couldn'f catch and pass in 7th grade and so on. If these stinky kids have the desire a seperate developmental team should be arranged where they learn the basics as not to slow down and ruin it for the more athletic kids! The mistake the town teams are making is that they try to use the better kids and mix them with the non athletic kids hoping to make them better. This is wrong! What are they doing for the better kids? The better kids only will get better if they play together! Who is looking out for the good who are frustrated paying with the non athletic kids? The majority of the talented girls on long Island play for the YJ blue!

Those town teams to which you refer include cold spring harbor and garden city. I'm not sure but i think manhasset and three villages share the same philosophy. They mix the kids and the result can be seen in their successful varsity programs and amount of kids who play in college. Some join clubs later to supplement their experience but that is not a requirement for ability. Either way, there is not a kid on any of those teams that cannot use lacrosse as a facilitator for college entrance. Many of those kids may have been deemed non-athletic on this thread. I have kids on both ends of that spectrum and it has worked for all of them to varying degrees. Socially, it is far better to keep them with town teams. After all, what is the end game with lacrosse? It is a non-revenue game even at the highest collegiate levels. Keep it in perspective, stay at home if your town enjoys a good program.

Being good in sports makes a HUGE difference to which top collage you go to.I disagree with you, lets take Garden City i.e take there town boys team that are hand picked called the L.I. Renagades . Every boy on those teams are very athletic no stinky kids. Take Massapequa at the youth level they have A and B teams in lax and othe sports.Take Manhasset and Huntington town teams they have A and B teams.I know for a fact that Huntington has a boys lax team that they hand picked through 8th grade that are very good. They didn't take non athletic kids on there team!Those kids will always be non athletic and there parents should be wise enough to guide them in the right direction other than sports and stop trying to ruin it for the athletic kids! Still nobody has answered my question about what is the town doing for the athletic kids many of them are doing NOTHING except for the few towns mentioned above.The non atheletic kids are used to losing and should be in developmental town athletics where the better kids taken to the next level by a parent of a very good could who understands the frustration of there kids.The non athletic kids are going nowhere in sports/collage.

I guess I am not understanding why is it the town's responsibility? As far as I can see, the town is giving all kids a chance to try a sport. The same way a school music program gives all the kids a chance to try an instrument. If you want to take it to the next level, you pay for it through an elite team, private lessons, etc. Like it or not, it is an extracurricular activity. Yes, it can be frustrating, but I don't see how anyone is trying to ruin it for the more athletic kids. You just have to take it upon yourself to find the opportunities where they are, like the club lax teams.

BTW, the YJ Blue teams are very good, but there are plenty of athletic girls on lots of the other YJ teams as well as on the Express, Liberty, 91 etc. Plenty of girls who will go on to top colleges, play college level sports and lead fulfilling lives.

Garden City has been pumping kids into D1 lax programs for decades. This was well before these alleged handpicked teams, which was really just another way for parent coaches to massage their egos and line their pockets. Some kjids opted not to be handpicked and are doing just fine.

Don't put the YJ in the same company of the EXPRESS, LIBERTY and 91. Are you kidding!!! . Kudos to the towns(mentioned above) who are seperating the sports talented kids and not caring about the parents of the kids that aren't athletic!

I like the YJ but they are not the only game in town despite what you want to think. Maybe the other clubs are smaller, haven't been around as long, but there are certainly very talented girls on other teams who also go on to great schools.

The YJ are the ONLY game in town, read there website!

Let me guess..when YJ loses a game its because the best players weren't there.....or my favorite one..."that team is stacked with older girls"...please give the world a break. YJ is NOT the only game in town at all. A lot of D1 schools fill rosters without the YJ club at all. Amazing how that could be. They are a great club.....and that is all, and despite that you somehow feel an apparently odd amout of pride in that (unless YOU are a player yourself) that is all they are.

The argument was only game in town. Yes, there are other clubs in the country that have some success but none locally that enjoy any where near the same level of success. They are the only local club that lists their placements by class year. If the other clubs disclosed the same information and you ranked the placement by the college ranking (1-30) with 30 being #1, the YJ would have near 500 pts, and the next best would have under 100.

That sounds pretty close to what is meant by the only game in town. Anybody want to test the math? What's even more compelling is this is only their 11th year. I would also bet that the percentage of LI players 12 years ago on top D1 rosters has not improved. These are very good business people to corner a hotbed market. You have to give them some credit.

I agree. Look at a top D1 team like Northwestern. Ranked #2 in Nation. They have at least 8 girls from Long Island and I believe that every one of them played with Yellow Jackets. Enough said.

and just about everyone of them coaches for a different club

YJ cant employ everyone!! All those Northwestern kids played Yellow Jackets for at least 5 years!! They made it too Northwestern based on their development of play through the YJ club program!

Yeah but the best players don't always make great coaches. Just because you can play doesnt mean you can coach effectively.

you make it sound like those kids made it to NW just because they played for the yellow jackets. news flash great athletes are great athletes. You can not teach size or speed and last time I Checked most athletes wether D1 or not have one or the other. Don't get me wrong ,I am not saying the program is not a good one, but it is not the only one. I know plenty of D1 athletes that never played for any club.

That list is VERY VERY SHORT!!!

Really, tell me some of these "plenty of girls" who are playing for top 10 D1 Colleges, not Iona or Sienna, but really top schools who did NOT play for a club.

Northwetern kids started there own program on Long Island and is probably YJ's number 1 competion on the island.

They are a good program and a huge program with some years having 5 teams, while most other clubs on LI have one or two. With that many kids on the rosters you are of course going to have a lot of kids playing in college.

Please...bring it on

did someone hit a nerve

I'd like to see how this new club calls themselves yellow jackets top competitor. Talk is cheap. This club isn't even listed on this website.

as of this moment there are 5 freshman from long island on the rosters of the top 10 D1 schools according to the rankings.Of these 5, 3 played YJ and 2 did not.

Where are your facts from??? Impact Players as of now

Northwestern has 7 all played YJ 1 Played No Club
Florida has 1 Played YJ
Duke has 2 Played YJ
North Carolina 2 Played YJ
Stanford 1 Played YJ
Notre Dame 2 Played YJ
Princeton 2 Played YJ
UPENN 3 Played YJ

Shall I keep going?

Freshman class of 2010 info from each teams website

Congrats to Coach Rose YJ Director on her 300th win!! What an amazing accomplishment currently leading NY state in Coaching wins!!

Congrats! What an achievement! Shame on Newsday - thats quite an accomplishment with one little sentence about it. But they will put in two huge pictures of Sayville beating up on lowly Bellport.

BOTC Industries congratulates Rose and the staff at the Yellow Jackets program on this achievement.

Sayville always gets big write-ups across all sports. It's nuts!

And Sayville gets another huge write up in Newsday again today, with pictures in two locations.

Anyway, back to the YJ: What I heard, and what turned me off of that team altogether, is that Carol Rose charges her team members to write letters of recommendation to college coaches for them. I heard, from a YJ parent, upwards of $2000. I find that outrageous. The girls are on a high-level team, showcasing at high-level tournaments, seen by all sorts of coaches, so why do they need a $2000 letter to get them on a college team? That's baloney.

Thanks for joining us here on the BOTC board, Powderfinger. For those who are not familiar with Powderfinger from our BOTN sister soccer site, many solid high school and collegiate insights are brought to the forum with his/her participation.

On the Sayville coverage, BOTC has learned that Emily Meier will be attending High Point for Lacrosse starting in the Fall 2011 semester - so at least Newsday is discussing player(s) heading into the solid Division I ranks.

Now, the Yellow Jackets recruiting service is an independent function from the rest of the program and you are right that this is an optional add-on to their organization. We have spent hours upon hours discussing profile preparation and college coach contacts on our College Boards. As with so many things in life, your family (parent/player) can opt to do the work successfully yourselves or pay a service provider for the same option.

There are numerous organizations - across all club and high school sports - that will perform the "recruiting service" functions for your family. The key point is that no one service will guarantee results or placements. This is why BOTC Industries recommends that parents/players must be an integral part of the college recruitment effort and not a passenger along for the ride.

That is NOT a true statement!! She does NOT charge them anything for any letters. GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT before you verbally slander someone without knowing what your talking about!!

Powderfinger you are soooo misguided!! She does not charge her players anything for any letters or phone calls. She is involved in a recruiting service, that is optional, to any player on Long island seeking additional help. The fee is Not 2000 so get YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT BEFORE YOU WRITE THIS CRAP.

She happens to be one of the most caring professional coaches on Long island helping many young ladies reach their potantial and dreams of playing college lacrosse!! GET OFF HER CASE

Read the most recent US LACROSSE magazine YJ and Northport all over it!! producing U-19 players, 12 div 1 players on her HS team, U-15 national coach,Schoolgirls champion Coach,Empire gold Medal Coach. She won the triple crown of HS lax last summer!!

And where did you get that FALSE info from??

Are you saying that the BOTC Industries response is inaccurate? The Yellow Jackets are a valued partner here on BOTC although we do not have their recruiting service pricing on hand.