Lacrosse Culture at St Albans?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They may have lost, yet this school continues to have a page dedicated to it that is now 13 pages long. Why do you think that is? STA students (and dads) don't seem to define themselves by the sport(s) they play.

Many STA dads played lacrosse at their prep schools and quite a few played at the college level. So there's that reliving of the glory days part. There is also the lacrosse mystique - tied to NE elitism, the Wall Street Network, blah, blah.... Lots of STA Board members and alums are fixated on bringing up the sport.

Also lots of posts on this thread are from obvious STA haters, enjoying taking pot shots at the program fueled by jealousy of everything else STA offers.

The sport is so much bigger now, and has a lot of great athletes playing these days. 30 years ago, it was a sport with huge barriers to entry and in the DMV played only by prep schools. Many STA dads who played in prep school then and even in college could not make today's Bullis roster. Their glory days were a function of a severely limited player pool! 30 years from now, crew and squash will be just like lacrosse is today.

In 1986 my public HS club team defeated St. Albans. Lacrosse was alive and well 30 years ago and I do not recall St. Albans being the team to beat. Landon was the local powerhouse. Back then there were lots of public school kids playing and many went on to great college careers. The WALL washington area lacrosse league had a lot of teams with public and private school kids.

In 2014, led by a HC who attended Gonzaga, a 5-win St. Albans team rallied from four goals down to defeat an undefeated and #1 ranked nationally Georgetown Prep team in the final IAC regular schedule IAC game. Results like the one your club team achieved in 1986 happen from time to time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They may have lost, yet this school continues to have a page dedicated to it that is now 13 pages long. Why do you think that is? STA students (and dads) don't seem to define themselves by the sport(s) they play.

Many STA dads played lacrosse at their prep schools and quite a few played at the college level. So there's that reliving of the glory days part. There is also the lacrosse mystique - tied to NE elitism, the Wall Street Network, blah, blah.... Lots of STA Board members and alums are fixated on bringing up the sport.

Also lots of posts on this thread are from obvious STA haters, enjoying taking pot shots at the program fueled by jealousy of everything else STA offers.

The sport is so much bigger now, and has a lot of great athletes playing these days. 30 years ago, it was a sport with huge barriers to entry and in the DMV played only by prep schools. [u] Many STA dads who played in prep school then and even in college could not make today's Bullis roster. Their glory days were a function of a severely limited player pool! 30 years from now, crew and squash will be just like lacrosse is today.

In 1986 my public HS club team defeated St. Albans. Lacrosse was alive and well 30 years ago and I do not recall St. Albans being the team to beat. Landon was the local powerhouse. Back then there were lots of public school kids playing and many went on to great college careers. The WALL washington area lacrosse league had a lot of teams with public and private school kids.

In 2014, led by a HC who attended Gonzaga, a 5-win St. Albans team rallied from four goals down to defeat an undefeated and #1 ranked nationally Georgetown Prep team in the final IAC regular schedule IAC game. Results like the one your club team achieved in 1986 happen from time to time.

Clearly missing the point. 30 years ago there were a lot of teams playing lacrosse in the DMV area. There were not HUGE barriers to entry other than going to Herman's Sporting goods and buying a stick. Not as many people in the area and certainly not as many players as today but NOT a severely limited player pool. It is now way more of a family investment than it was in the mid to late 1980's.

[Anonymous]

STA will not relax its admissions standards for anyone. That is laudable. So they have to rely on kids who can play lacrosse, can afford the price and are good students, all knowing that most years they are not able to be competitive with the rest of the IAC. That means a much smaller talent pool than the rest of the league.

[Anonymous]

you really think the kids at Landon, GP, Bullis and SS/SA who are committed Ivy League schools or NESCAC schools are dummies?

STA Dommy or Daddy, please stop making excuses for why your program can't compete.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:STA will not relax its admissions standards for anyone. That is laudable. So they have to rely on kids who can play lacrosse, can afford the price and are good students, all knowing that most years they are not able to be competitive with the rest of the IAC. That means a much smaller talent pool than the rest of the league.

Get off your high horse. I’m an STA parent and I can tell you it’s damn frustrating for the kids. I’m sure that they would rather get into a place like Dickinson because of lacrosse than get in because of their academics. And there are NO kids going to Dartmouth from this years class, yet over at Prep there’s at least one going for lacrosse. Very few kids are going to play college sports, even at D3s. Ask your kid if he would rather suck at lax at STA but get into Bard? His answer might surprise you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's great that the lacrosse program has been reinvigorated. But the school needs to guard against "lax bro" culture spreading as well.

One upset win over a not as dominant as usual Landon team and the program is re-invigorated. When was it ever invigorated in the last 25 years besides 2007? Pump the brakes until the season is about 8 games old and lets see where things stand.

7 - 0

They have a chance, for sure.

They won't get a single IAC win this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you really think the kids at Landon, GP, Bullis and SS/SA who are committed Ivy League schools or NESCAC schools are dummies?

STA Dommy or Daddy, please stop making excuses for why your program can't compete.

Actually, it's much more common than you think for quite average students to get into these schools based on their athletic ability.

You'll have to dig in and understand the "Ivy League Academic Index" to understand how this works and how low the bar is set. The NESCAC has their own version of the NESCAC with the same number of tiers.

Every year, parents and students of "better" students watch in amazement as some of their less academically qualified classmates get accepted while they do not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:STA will not relax its admissions standards for anyone. That is laudable. So they have to rely on kids who can play lacrosse, can afford the price and are good students, all knowing that most years they are not able to be competitive with the rest of the IAC. That means a much smaller talent pool than the rest of the league.

Get off your high horse. I’m an STA parent and I can tell you it’s damn frustrating for the kids. I’m sure that they would rather get into a place like Dickinson because of lacrosse than get in because of their academics. And there are NO kids going to Dartmouth from this years class, yet over at Prep there’s at least one going for lacrosse. Very few kids are going to play college sports, even at D3s. Ask your kid if he would rather suck at lax at STA but get into Bard? His answer might surprise you.

+1 So true.

[Anonymous]

All of these IAC have to decide what level they want to compete at in which sports.

It didn't used to be this way in the IAC, but the "good old days" --- at least in the present ---appear to be long gone.

When Bullis or Prep or Landon decide to pull all the stops out and bring in a bunch of kids, who really are there primarily because of the athletic ability, than that has a ripple effect on the other schools.

They don't have to follow suit. But if they do not, unless they are very lucky or extremely well coached, they are not going to be competing seriously for the IAC title in these sports.

The St. Alban's coach would have to be a miracle worker to get that squad into the upper tier of the IAC. It's unreasonable to expect it.

[Anonymous]

Using the number of "Commits" as a guage of the strength of the various IAC teams.

It's probably not a bad overall measure, but it's got a lot of flaws. The major problem is that recruiting is a very inexact science that contains a huge number of misses on the potential of kids.

Since the DIII schools don't give scholarships and even the DI's have only 15 and a fraction to give, recruiting and even admission doesn't mean all that much. If someone gets a basketball full-free ride it means something different.

When I look at the list of Prep "commits" above, I don't think it provides as much information as some think it does.

All of these Commit Lists:

1. Include lots of kids that really aren't going to see the field in games, except maybe at "garbage time" in games. College squads have 35 guys. Not everyone plays. Some of this is due to mis-judgements by the recruiters as to how good (fast, skilled, tough) the kid is. Some of it is the college coaches saying, "We don't really know who is going to pan out, so lets bring in the max. number of kids we can and see who can play and who wants to play when they get here".

2. Include kids that will quit the college squad pretty quickly once they see how tough the competitions is, what the demands of the program are and how relatively unimportant the sport is on many college campuses.

3. Includes schools that really don't recruit that hard and where the kid is academically good enough so that the coach doesn't have to use one of his admission "Chits" to get him in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Using the number of "Commits" as a guage of the strength of the various IAC teams.

It's probably not a bad overall measure, but it's got a lot of flaws. The major problem is that recruiting is a very inexact science that contains a huge number of misses on the potential of kids.

Since the DIII schools don't give scholarships and even the DI's have only 15 and a fraction to give, recruiting and even admission doesn't mean all that much. If someone gets a basketball full-free ride it means something different.

When I look at the list of Prep "commits" above, I don't think it provides as much information as some think it does.

All of these Commit Lists:

1. Include lots of kids that really aren't going to see the field in games, except maybe at "garbage time" in games. College squads have 35 guys. Not everyone plays. Some of this is due to mis-judgements by the recruiters as to how good (fast, skilled, tough) the kid is. Some of it is the college coaches saying, "We don't really know who is going to pan out, so lets bring in the max. number of kids we can and see who can play and who wants to play when they get here".

2. Include kids that will quit the college squad pretty quickly once they see how tough the competitions is, what the demands of the program are and how relatively unimportant the sport is on many college campuses.

3. Includes schools that really don't recruit that hard and where the kid is academically good enough so that the coach doesn't have to use one of his admission "Chits" to get him in.

. This is a stupid post. We don’t need to use the list of commits to gauge the strength of the IAC program. The win loss record speaks for itself. St. Albans parents says they don’t mind being crappy athletes on crappy teams because they are so academically strong. I call BS. I think the kids do care. And I think the parents should be mad if they pay 45k just so their kid can go to someplace like Dickenson and not play sports. What a waste. And I can assure you that the Prep boys going on to play college lax are no dummies. And they will contribute to their teams. You don’t know anything about college lax recruiting if you think the college coach gave them the spot for no reason. Notre Dame, UNC, Villanova, Navy, Dartmouth? Are you kidding? Either they are amazing lax players or they are very good lax players who bring the academic average of the team up. That’s how it works. So they can’t, as you suggest, be dumb, bad lacrosse players. That’s NOT how it works.

These kids know exactly what the demands are for their college sport. They have many peers, older brothers, cousins, family friends, who play at that level. You just don’t know any one who plays at that level because you are probably an STa parent who never played anything but tennis and has to justify why you send your kid to that school.

[Anonymous]

List of St Albans seniors playing lax in college.

One to Brown
one to Washington and Lee

Woohoo!!

[Anonymous]

Tuition at St Albans is not 45K. It's closer to 60K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:List of St Albans seniors playing lax in college.

One to Brown
one to Washington and Lee

Woohoo!!

Most students don’t go to STA to pursue a career in lacrosse if you haven’t figured that out yet. They’re a little more focused on their academics and enjoying the sport and being on a team. It’s a little shocking the mentality on here that doesn’t get that for many people high school sports are just that – high school sports and they’re fine to pursue other interest once they get to college.

[Anonymous]

in 1986 STA and Landon was THE local lacrosse rivalry. It had been Landon and Episcopal but as STA moved ahead of EHS things changed. Landon and STA agreed to make their game the last of the season so it would be for the title. It stayed that way for several years and the games were intense and competitive.