Reply to IAC Lacrosse

Forum Index » Lacrosse

Reply to "IAC Lacrosse"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]So my son is a sophomore. "They" (his club coaches, seconded by high school coaches) keep telling us that skills-wise, he is in "low D-1" or more likely DIII territory. We don't need the scholarhip money. Just want to get him into his reach school. Do we get anything by communicating to the college coach that all we really want from him is his thumb on the scale with Admissions?

I'd be very careful about what I told coaches. I know that's hard. They may look like your friend, talk like your friend, etc, but they are adults and this is their career even at the lower levels of the sport.

I actually thought about writing  book about it all, but lost interest. I did, however develop a tool that other parents snapped up. I'll expand below.

[b]Getting a Good Assessment[/b] - The hardest thing in all of this is coming up with a clear picture of the level at which your son could play meaningfully. Parents are not very good judges (Imagine that). HS and Club coaches are reluctant to be frank because there is frequently more risk than reward in doing it for them. It's especially hard for parents to do this if they have never seen a DIII or low DI college lacrosse game close up.

First a point about low DI vs. DIII. Many DIII schools are actually better than many DIII schools. The traditional DIII powers (Salisbury, etc.) would IMO easily beat the great majority of DI schools. So I would ask the coaches to be more specific as to where your son could play meaningfully ... what schools? what conferences?.

"Skills" is one thing. I hope they don't mean just "stick skills". College lacrosse is a physical game and and college coaches look for size, physique. speed, quickness and toughness. And a commitment to playing. The wash-out rate is significant after kids get on campus and see how much work it is and how tough it is. Some schools appear to emphasize physical tools.

Athletically, What Does Your Son Want? - Would be be happy to just be on the team or at the end of the scale does he need to be an impact player? Obviously the more likely he is to be an impact player, the greater the incentive for the catch to argue his case vigorously to Admissions.

Academics is actually the easy part. By the time he's a Junior, you'll know what schools are a stretch and which are out of reach. The HS College Counseling Staff can be a big help, if you are actually willing ask them to listen to them. They are gun-shy too after dealing with so many parents of different stripes.

What we found was that our HS Admissions people didn't like dealing with boys who were being recruited. It was out of their comfort zone and it seems to them to be "unfair" that these kids were going through the process differently. They also don't like the blow-back they get from parents whose sons don't get accepted at some schools and the athletes do even though their sons are better students.

You don't need to get into the whole athletics thing with the HS College Placement people. Just get an assessment at the end of the Jr year as to what schools are safeties, probables and stretches.

Armed with an athletic and academic assessment, you can build your chart.

On the vertical axis, you put Strength of Lacrosse Program (1 to 10 or whatever). On the horizontal Axis you put Academic Competitiveness. (1 -5?). You then put the schools you would consider --- screening for geography, or cost or whatever --- into the various cells on on the chart. I used the Laxpower rankings. Based on the current ranking, schools that are in the Top 10 in D-III include some NESCAC Schools, so those would end up in the upper right quadrant (Good Lacrosse schools and good academic schools)

Now against the Academic Axis you are obviously looking for some stretch schools. That's the whole idea. Where can I leverage Lacrosse or whatever sport?

Now you have a strategy. You know which schools to tour or visit. You know what schools to write to and express interest. You know what schools to send that video to. You know which Summer Camps you might want to attend.

As you go through the process and schools start to express interest or not express interest, you can adjust your strategy by adding and dropping targets. When you fill out the Lacrosse form, you will give the coaches an academic snapshot and they'll have a good idea whether they can get you in or not. But here again, be careful. They want the maximum number of kids to apply so they can have the largest population to choose from.

It took me a couple of times through the process to get this organized. And I have the benefit of seeing how it worked out. And since then I have seen dozens of others go through the process. I have seen it all work out and I have seen a lot of cases where it was botched. (Wrong school. Wrong Level. Wrong coach, etc.).

This whole idea of the stretch academic school needs to be considered carefully. A number of years ago a Princeton professor did a study of PU athletes. He found that their careers matched their academic abilities and not those of their more academically-talented classmates. The Princeton education added little to their particular careers.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics