Feedback on VLC Club Lacrosse?
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Anonymous
If the people (crazies) on here have been theorizing about all this movement among clubs etc, where is it? |
Anonymous
| Dude, who cares. Just play lax and chill. |
Anonymous
| I know this is the same mom of the a 2025 who “does not have a son on the team”. 😂 |
Anonymous
Um…. no. 🙄 |
Anonymous
|
25 VLC has finished tryouts and looks to have picked up some new folks and let go of some of their dead weight.
New Head has work to do but I think they will compete and continue to do better and better. Looking at some of the other posts, it does not appear that there was a lot of movement between the better clubs at this age group. I did not see a lot of new helmets from NL, DCE or Madlax at tryouts but did see the boys really excited and competing hard to be on this team. Will be fun to watch and see how the team continues to develop. |
Anonymous
| These are kids, not professionals. No kid is "dead weight." |
Anonymous
thats pretty crass since the team threw the ball away all the time? coaches have yet to show they aren't lost and bewildered. maybe it gets worked out by summer time after the kids get real coaching in high school. |
Anonymous
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Lacrosse families,
Here’s some insight to help to knowledgeable and not-so-knowledgeable lacrosse families to understand: • The real VLC experience • How to get the most out of the VLC experience The Real VLC Experience The most important thing to understand is what VLC pitches is NOT the experience VLC players receive. Platitudes about advanced coaching, lacrosse IQ, high school/college lacrosse preparation is just talk. VLC says they develop players and pursue the highest competition. VLC looks to win games with the best players they can acquire, with minimal effort from the coaching staff. The Crabs sign VLC up for tournaments, but player development is really done by recreation and high school lacrosse coaches. While VLC travel lacrosse can be a 2nd or 3rd job for their coaches, there are unpaid volunteers who invest greater care, preparation, and effort into youth lacrosse coaching. For the lacrosse knowledgeable, here are more specifics: • Outside teams coached by VLC directors, most of entire team(s) have regressed since tryouts last year meaning players were better before nine months of VLC's coaching. With very few exceptions stick stills are poor across the board. Teams are more likely to lose possession than produce a quality shot on goal. • When VLC says they are coaching the game the way it's meant to be played, the opposing teams are the showcase. Younger teams are showing more advanced play - it's really sad, but painfully obvious even to casual observers new to the sport. • Offensive Scheme Fundamentally Broken o Lobotomized offensive set with passive, limited, and largely stationary players - it's like watching baseball or golf. Parents agree it's a large waste of time and talent. o Inability to score on 4v3, 3v2s ranging from fast-break, EMO or a settled offensive set. o Like a 4th grade rec team, players can only dodge in one direction and if they go the other way it's because their coaches have already announced it to the opposing team with predictable results. o Last fall, VLC players, parents and opponents figured out that the offensive scheme didn’t work. Six months later, the VLC coaches finally reached the same conclusion, but stubbornly kept to a losing strategy. • Missing position-specific coaching: • Middie alley-dodging and shots against decent defenders and decent goalies sucked out loud, shooting from the parking lot with no off-ball movement was pointless yet stubbornly repeated. Inverting middies from X was even lower percentage - they can't even hit the cage running downhill much less away from it. • Attackmen cannot function under defensive attention, let alone aggressive checking, and largely pass the ball around the perimeter. Try backing up the goal to keep possession. Running a fast break with few passes and shot on goal isn't that hard, • The defensemen aren't doing too much better. They spend too much time in shooting drills when their passing/catching/defensive skills need major work. Clearing the ball to the offensive side of the field should be routine, not a high-risk adventure. They get lost covering offensive cutters, because the practice has them covering stationary players by design. Despite these deficiencies, the defensemen see themselves as scoring threats against opposing goalies. • Practice drills don’t develop appropriate game skills and coaches don't correct glaring mistakes made by players. If all you need is youth daycare, I assure you that there are better options. • Toxic unaccountable team culture o The "competition" culture promoted by the VLC coaches created a low-trust environment (think “Hunger Games” movie) of individuals wearing the same uniform, rather than a team working together. VLC players compete more against themselves in getting/keeping/shooting the ball, rather than working together against opposing teams. o Coaches are often late or absent for team events practices/games. On the other hand, some kids get more out of practice when certain coaches don’t show up. o Certain players can skip the majority of practices and make the same egregious game-time mistakes, without any consequences. • Game time o There were wildly inequitable practice reps and playing time for starters and reserves - regardless of practice effort, Lax IQ, or performance. If you were a VLC starter, you didn’t have to put in the work. If you’re a VLC reserve player, nothing you did will improve your playing time. For some worthy reserve players, game-time was near zero. In short, this past season was a series of broken promises. Several kids quit the team and more seriously considered quitting travel lacrosse or the sport entirely. Lacrosse families may have written checks for their kids to learn and play lacrosse. However, what they really ended up paying for is for inexperienced adults to half-heartedly learn how to coach youth lacrosse. A VLC program director informed by multiple genuinely concerned parents, but was largely unaccountable, dismissive, and disengaged with fixing anything during the season. After this setback year, VLC decided to reshuffle some coaches. I say reshuffle, rather than reorganize, because reorganize implies that they were ever organized. Whether these coaching changes will make a difference is uncertain. However, if you decide to continue or join VLC, I want to avoid a "lost year" for your lacrosse family. How To Get the Most Out of the VLC Experience The VLC experience is best suited for starting midfielders who like to carry and shoot the ball, regardless of team win-loss record, hoping that someone’s watching them. The colloquial term for this is "hero ball". Between these players and the coaching staff, I see an unvoiced mutual understanding – “Don’t expect too much from us and we won’t expect too much from you”. First, recognize that you’re paying for tournaments and game time for your son, not lacrosse coaching. Contrary to what you may be told, there aren’t special tournaments available to VLC that aren’t available to other travel teams - their dollars are just as green. Before you travel for a tournament, find out how much playing time your son can expect. If the coaches are cagey with their answer to this simple question, that’s a big red flag at any level (youth, high school, college). Every coach from the 6U level up should have roster plan for each game. If your son’s playing time is zero or near zero, you then have the choice of whether to drive several hours for your son to participate in warm-ups and watch substandard lacrosse play. What I would recommend is that you NOT use your money to subsidize other kids’ tournament experiences. The coaches can’t give your son meaningful playing time, despite making the team and putting in the work at practice? Can’t get objective metrics on what your son needs to do in practice to earn game-time, when starters don’t even show up for practice and throw the ball away in games? If so, that’s an indictment of VLC coaching. You can't fix that, but you can request for a financial credit for that game/tournament and use that time and money instead for personalized coaching for your son. VLC recruits talent, it does NOT develop talent. If you want personalized or positional coaching for your son, enroll him in camps and clinics led by lacrosse experts. There are lots of options in the DC/Baltimore Area. I cannot recommend VLC clinics for anything other than keeping your kid active. The most important is to hold the VLC coaches accountable to the representations that they make to you and your son. DO NOT allow unfulfilled commitments from VLC to linger. Escalate these for resolution early and often, even if you need to speak a VLC or Crabs director. If you to get a VLC director to make an appearance at a practice/game, the director would NEVER tolerate the bad habits describe above. While this may not guarantee you a successful resolution, letting VLC coaches delay answers, decisions, and promised follow-through is a guaranteed losing strategy. Don’t blindly accept the “trust the process” appeal to maximize your son’s player long-term potential for college coaches in the middle of high school. Lacrosse is the fastest and best game on two feet. No travel team is perfect. The first travel team your son joins may not be his final destination. Whatever your path for 2021-2022, I wish the best for your family. |
Anonymous
| Seek help. |
Anonymous
| I am sure Dico and Z are glad to have this parent leave. CM however would keep that CC on auto draft and promise a top slot on the newly formed Madlax Loudounassas team |
Anonymous
| That long post above is exactly right. Unfortunately I don’t think Dico and Z will pay any attention to that trenchant and accurate criticism. As the PP said, they were dismissive and disengaged this season. Note, in particular, that the PP was not criticizing the kids, but the coaches, who were the real dead weight on 2025. The new coach will have his work cut out for him fixing three years of neglect. |
Anonymous
You are commenting on you own post. Nobody is reading it because it is too long and complicated. |
Anonymous
pp is on point. even more long nd complicated is the vlc coach storytelling shared with parents and players. this post sums up the past, maybe future is better. |
Anonymous
Nope. I did not make that post. I think I know who did. He is a very thoughtful man, who knows lacrosse much better than I do. Anyone who is thinking about having their kid try out for VLC would be well advised to read it. If you are incapable of reading posts that are longer than two or three lines, oh well. You should go play in one of those "your team sux LOL" Back of the Cage threads and let the grown ups talk here. |
Anonymous
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I feel like there's a lot of animosity in the above post, but it is also uneducated and looks to be from youth parent based on the lack of historical or present knowledge across the program.
I'm now on my 2nd child with VLC and the experience has been better then we would have ever asked for. The coaches coach, mentor, and guide the players, showing them what right looks like and explaining what it will take for them to succeed at the next level. I know my son(s) receive emails, texts, notes from their Coaches throughout the year to keep them focused and goal oriented. Z and Dico respond to any question/inquiry I've had promptly and have squashed any player/parent disturbances professionally. I'm sure they'd assist or educate you if you asked. Lastly, if the process is so broken as you say, why does this program continue to churn out college players? Having been here for over 6 years now, I can tell you that their processes, scheduling, methodologies mirror what they were in 2015. They just practice at different locations now. My son left the house around 6am this morning to go workout with his teammates. I only say this because he knows that only he can control his future, not the coaches, parents, or teachers. Like the coaches always say, "It's a player driven process." |