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[quote=Anonymous]I played at Dartmouth in the early 1990s and was also a grad assistant for one year while I got my masters at another Ivy. I have stayed involved in Dartmouth lacrosse ever since as a donor and an alum job network reference for the players over many years. I get sent the twitter commit announcements and links to these chat rooms often and am then asked what I think about it.

I believe a lot of lacrosse parents and their kids are sadly misinformed. When I played there wasn't such a thing as committing to an Ivy. If you were a recruited athlete the coach would advocate your application with the admissions office in the fall of your senior year. The boost was relative to the sport. Back then the pull for ice hockey was a lot more than for lacrosse, at least at Dartmouth. Recruiting for lacrosse back then was mostly responding to student interest from New England boarding school kids and some others from Long Island or Baltimore, a lot more than the coaches going out to find the kids. But almost always the reverse interest in Dartmouth came from strong students who had an interest in what lacrosse could do to help tug them into the college. That was the case with me and nearly everyone else back then.

Today it is a lot different in many ways, but is exactly the same in the most important way. There aren't any Ivy coaches out there looking for 9th graders and only a few are really inclined to look for 10th graders. I know all of these coaches, and with only one exception these guys are responding to the demand from you the lacrosse parents and the kids. One of the problems all of them face now is if they play along and "commit" kids is a communication problem. One of the Yale coaches joked to me last summer that parents and kids have selective hearing. I laughed because this is something more than one Dartmouth lacrosse alum has taken the new staff to task on a few times. Did they really commit a kid from DC who hadn't even started 10th grade yet? Well, sort of.

I have no reason to mislead any of you. The way if a kid and parents are pushing their interest in a school and the coaches see the kid is a promising prospect on film an Ivy coach could state something like this: "We believe you are the type of student athlete we'd like to have here at [Ivy] if you continue a track to progress as a player and as a student. If if we reach a point after your junior year when we as coaches can submit your academic record for an early read with the admissions office, understand that the criteria are these grades, scores and AI index standards. If you don't meet them, we will not be able to continue to recruit you as a student athlete at [Ivy]. Right now we have identified you as a lacrosse recruit we'd like to recruit and sponsor for admissions after your junior year, but please understand that our continued interest in having you join our program at [Ivy] will be contingent on your performance as a student and our continued evaluation of your lacrosse abilities later in the recruiting process". An NCAA coach WOULD NOT email this to a kid or parent, because that would be an NCAA rule violation, but they would say it exactly like that to a 9th grade kid and parent in their office on an unofficial visit. To the kid, parent what they hear is AN OFFER and what they then communicate is they are COMMITTED TO THE ADMISSIONS PROCESS. Technically, any 9th kid at the prep schools you listed is committed to completing an application to a college he or she is interested in, and the veracity of a D1 lacrosse commit to an Ivy is nothing more than just that.

Last year at this time of year it circled around that UPenn's coach was called in and raked over coals by administrators for extending commitments to over half a dozen 9th graders who had not completed a semester of high school. His response to the administrators was he hadn't committed any of them. On face that is laughable because Myers was reviled by competitors for being untruthful since his program did nothing to stop proud kids, clubs and parents from storming social media to announce college pledges. But Myers survived it by sharing his communications which was NOT extending commitments to 9th graders, and technically he was correct. He was then asked to put a lid on the silly side and that is why the UPenn 2019 "commits" out there today have not been appearing in social media circles.

An important thing to note is the only critical thing back from my generation is still the only critical thing now. The student athlete recruitment ends with a commitment from an Ivy league coach in July after junior year. It is at that time that a coach walks his allocated number of student athlete academic portfolios over to the admissions office. Before that happens, the coach will make for sure he's not wasting space in that pile on a kid who isn't qualified for admissions. Outside of Cornell, there are no Ivy lacrosse coaches who can just get your sons in. If a kid misses the grades, scores and AI composite, admissions will decline him. Another point is there is a difference in the conversations I have with coaches I know at Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Penn versus the conversations 9th and 10th grade lacrosse kids and parents have with same. The difference is I am listening. Your sons are being recruited by these Ivies. Half of these kids will wash out in admissions or wash out on the field and be later ranked below other recruits after 11th grade. Coaches drop their #1 guy to #3 and out of the picture after junior year all the time. That happened to me with Brown, and I wound up at Dartmouth. It didn't break my heart that I was not Dom Starsia's #1 or #2 anymore after my junior year, because while I aimed for that I was never promised that. As important I and everyone else back then didn't set ourselves up for humiliation to have touted we were headed to some Ivy for years only to get ranked lower when it counted. This should be something for lacrosse kids and parents to consider.[/quote]

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