<p>My mistake in using the term "footy" which I understand can be used to describe soccer. I was responding to nhfootballer who wants to play big time prep American football. I stand by my comments regarding the Erickson League as being indisputably the best.</p>
<p>As to soccer: Salisbury fielded their worst team in probably the last 20 years this fall and AOF won the Class A championship for the second time in the last three years.</p>
<p>To the Original Poster (OP): It is quite difficult to rank the academics in the ISL without further parameters regarding your and your child's goals. This very common and legitimate question has been addressed well by inquiring mind's post above, in my opinion. Roxbury Latin, St. Paul's, Milton and Groton academics are superb with respect to college placement success. St. George's has one of the most outstanding college placement offices in the nation, and this may be a fair gauge of its academic strength. All of these are fine schools, but there are some very different campus atmospheres and cultures that can only be appreciated by an in person visit to each school. Boston Magazine raves about Middlesex, but many of the students are day students and a large percent of the boarders live within a 2 hour drive, suggesting that this school may not be the best learning (socially and academically) environment for students from much greater distances. You can get into the Ivies even from the bottom half of the class at Groton, St. Paul's and Roxbury Latin, but they are much smaller schools than Milton, for example. The ISL stresses academic excellence, so it is best to find a match school among the 16 as all are well respected by admissions folks at the most competitive colleges and universities.</p>
<p>I believe BB&N was ranked 3rd in the Boston area behind Andover and Milton a couple years ago. Thing probably have changed a little bit, but you really can't go wrong with most of the ISL schools...or at least the top half. If you are worried about colleges (and I'm guessing you do), BB&N does a very good job of placing it's students in top schools. </p>
<p>This is all coming from a BB&N alum though.</p>
<p>I just want to correct the percentage of boarding students at Middlesex since I have a child who currently attends as a boarding student. It is about 70 percent boarding.</p>
<p>"As to soccer: Salisbury fielded their worst team in probably the last 20 years this fall and AOF won the Class A championship for the second time in the last three years."</p>
<p>I understand; however, I am just saying that while it is good high school soccer, it is not really good soccer. I watched both teams play and it wasn't pretty.</p>
<p>Former BB&N parent here--BB&N Class of 2007 with 115 students total sent:</p>
<p>18 students to Ivies
25 students to NESCACs (Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury et)
4 students to Georgtown
1 to Duke
1 to MIT</p>
<p>Boys athletics are quite strong in Football (one player to BC next year, one to Columbia), soccer and Baseball (one to Georgetown, one to Dartmouth, one to Harvard). I am not sure of how strong the girl's programs are</p>
<p>College counseling is second to none and the coaches and AD really advocate for their student athletes in college admissions</p>
<p>fun is fun...
Don't you get it? Obviously, AOF deserves the trophy. If your friend is a serious player, though, he will probably agree. I know my son has lots of team spirit, but will still tell you the soccer is nasty-looking and does not compare at all to high-level club. It is, after all, supposed to be "the beautiful game".</p>
<p>The point....at this point....is moot. I was referring back to the original posts when I thought you were using the term "footy" in reference to soccer and saying "play for the best" when playing "footy" (soccer) for the best prep school team won't really do much to improve your chances of recruitment to a top D1 program unless you continue club. Yes, it is an "apples to oranges" thing. I was trying to point that out.</p>
<p>My husband felt the same way you do about watching soccer (i.e. the drying paint analogy), but as our son progressed and improved, it actually became enjoyable, particularly after he discovered English and Brazilian soccer...er, football.
And, actually, I didn't care much for the sport myself. I do think a good European game (and our club team, which plays Euro-style soccer) is interesting....and "pretty". American soccer (the MLS), most of the high school I've seen, and many college teams is not fun to watch as it is just a bunch of big, speedy guys zipping up and down the field without too much technical skill.</p>
<p>But at least there is action. No offense to the baseball folks here, but THAT has got to be the slowest sport to watch. The one year my son played I said to him "well, at least I can bring a book to your games....come to think of it...you can too."<br>
We were very glad when we decided to play lacrosse the following year and he loves it. Took us a while to understand the game (heck, we still don't - need to get the "Lacrosse for Dummies" book) but at least there is ACTION.</p>
<p>Was it you that asked keylme about lacrosse being easy to pick up? It seems to me that lots of football and hockey players pick up lacrosse easily (recently a lacrosse coach told me you can always tell the new hockey turned lacrosse players as they keep the sticks down for a while). I think it has to do with the hitting and the technical skills come because they are good athletes. We can always tell which kids on other teams play football too.</p>
<p>It is essential reading for every parent. If a player -- or his parents -- are relatively new to the game, I make sure this book gets in their hands. I've got a box of them. The booster club sells them at tournaments for $5 each and they do a brisk business.</p>
<p>And consider this for yourself if you want some more detail:</p>
<p>The governing body for the sport is unique because it covers both the male and female divisions. But US Lacrosse is also very tight with the Positive Coaching Alliance -- a Palo Alto-based organization that emphasizes coaching by using positive techniques. Not coddling, but emphasizing instruction and constructive criticism over berating and yelling at players in exasperation. A big part of making that work is having the parents and spectators on the same page. Getting them educated about the game is essential because I can only be a positive coach for so long when I've got idiot parents screaming at the players, the officials, the timekeeper and the other coaches and me -- regardless of what it is, but especially when the parents are totally clueless about what they're screaming about.</p>
<p>We love baseball....husband is the president of our local Babe Ruth League. It is exciting when you get to higher levels. Our team hosted Regionals a few years back and there were a few thousand people at the games, fireworks on opening night, etc. And this in a town of 1500 (I did not forget a zero.....). I usually keep the stat book and I have trouble keeping up with the action because of base-stealing, pick-off's, etc. It can be exciting. Of course, it is not the fast running pace of lacrosse, but still fun.</p>
<p>Continuing to take the thread off course, if it ever had one. I have to disagree with the football player to lacrosse transition. The only football players who transitioned to lacrosse that I saw were defensive goons. Perhaps that is why you could pick them out.</p>
<p>I play lacrosse and football. i started lacrosse the spring after i began football. I can tell difference between football and lax (short for lacrosse) players. As a running back, I tend to carry the ball down the field more often than pass. Well maybe it's because I've always been successful doing that. Regular lax players tend to whack with the stick and I tend to body check, but that's just a personal preference because it always get the job done. I'm friends with kids on other lax teams, and 2 of them take face offs, like me, and both are football players. Maybe that has a connection because you push are tackle others all day in football. I fake a lot of my moves in lacrosse, just like football. I don't like to wear rib pads; I avoid them when even i don't feel like using them-in football, you don't wear those bulky equipment. Most of the football lax player I've seen were in defensive positions too. On exception is me, I play attack and midfield.</p>
<p>To some extent I agree with JB1 -- a lot of American Football players moving into lacrosse end up as defenders, and bring a football mentality to the game. </p>
<p>I would disagree that the game is easy to pick up. Learning how to catch and throw is one thing, learning the subtleties of the game is another.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are a lot of great players in HS who play both -- look at the list of highly recriuted college lax players. Many of them are all conference or all state football players as well.</p>
<p>There was this guy years ago from LI who played football and lacrosse at a college in up-state NY. Went on to play a little pro ball for a team in Ohio.
He is still regarded as possibly the best laxer ever...</p>
<p>I concur. Lax is not easy to pick up. Maybe the reason is that we don't see it on TV as often as football. Therefore, we don't know all the rules and fouls in the game. Stick skills is much harder to work on in lax than ball skills in football. In lax, you move you feet, hands and eyes twice as much as football. Controlling a ball in a net while running and dodging is much harder than running or throwing in football, at least I think so. I'm not saying football is an easy sport, but lax is much quicker and hurts a lot more.</p>
<p>I only said it is "easy" because I heard from several people recently that a lot of hockey and football players WILL pick it up as a second sport in the spring and they do well. But again, they are already good athletes and that makes a difference.<br>
That said, it is a very technical sport and certainly middle and even JV high school lacrosse is quite different from the Varsity and College game.</p>