Need Advice for Lacrosse playing hs freshman daughter - top academics/ wondering which schools?

Athletic Recruits
1

Hi - I have a 9th Grade private school daughter who is at the top of her class (all A+s in hardest classes) and accelerated in math and writing. She is gifted and way ahead academically. Re: sports, she ran cross country in the fall with varsity times, played JV basketball and was top scorer, and is good at lacrosse and on a club team. She probably wants to play lacrosse in college, but I think she probably can get into a top D1 school academically, but might not be D1 level lacrosse. She still loves the game. I want to develop her lacrosse, but we are not counting on it for money at all. It is about the love of the game and maybe helping her get into college. I have many questions:

  1. which camps/showcases would be best for her? She can travel outside of Texas. Harvard has a one day play day for her grade, and I am wondering if going to a one day program is worth it.
  2. which D3 schools are good enough to be an academic fit for her? MIT and the NESCAC schools come to mind. Is it true that she could start contacting NESCAC schools now? Which other schools would be worth looking at? We will make some visits this summer.
  3. what else can we do to develop her skills?
  4. is there an on-line recruiting site that is good? Her club team uses one.
  5. How do I get decent video of her playing?

Many thanks for your advice. She is also a Dartmouth legacy, so will most likely apply ED there, unless some other great school shows interest in her early for lacrosse.

2

My niece is a recruited D1 lacrosse player. I can’t help with most of your questions, but I do know that there were recruiters finding her by freshman/sophomore year. She had committed by junior year. She didn’t reach out to them. NESCACs would be a great place to start. I believe Colby especially has a strong program. Maybe look at Franklin & Marshall and Dickinson as well.

Also, there is a subforum for athletic recruiting: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/

3

I don’t think you need to be recruited for MIT. S17’s friend is playing there and she’s a very average player, not the best at our small high school, didn’t do any club teams or any of that.

4

My son has a friend (girl) who is a freshman lax player. She is already being courted by D1 schools which also happen to be top academically… Honestly, if you are good, they find you. You need to be playing on top level teams to be seen which involves travel. You also need to be on summer “futures teams.” First you have to be good enough to make those elite teams and then you are in the tournaments that put you in front of the recruiter’s eyes. This has been a year round activity for this young lady. If your daughter wants in she has to be good enough and make these teams and quickly. You should talk to your coaches to find out where the tryouts are and if she has a chance.

Most likely D3 teams will not be an academic fit for her. This might come down to choosing the best academic institution for her and seeing if there is a club lacrosse she can participate in.

If she is as top academically as you say your best bet is to shoot for merit money and club for the lacrosse. Good luck.

5

Does her club team have a recruiting coordinator? Many clubs have a coach who will give guidance and help through the recruiting process. My D did not play lacrosse but she had friends recruited and the process was much like we experienced in soccer. Top tournaments and school specific ID camps were often the primary method to be recruited.

I strongly disagree with the above statement that D3 teams will not be an academic fit. There are many top LACs with lacrosse teams. If your D prefers a large school then club will likely be her opportunity. Some D3 programs will be extremely competitive so not all will be an option if your D isn’t a top player.

6

Lacrosse changed the recruiting cycle 3 years ago and now no coach can discuss recruiting with a student until Sept 1 of junior year. Of course they get around this by talking to hs and club coaches, but they can’t answer emails or text to the student or parents. they can talk to a student if the student initiates the call. However, don’t make the mistake of waiting until junior year to contact the coaches. The college coaches know who they want as soon as junior year starts. It is just, unfortunately, a one way street as the student has to keep sending info without getting a response.

Does her club participate in the IWLCA showcases? If not, she might consider going solo and being put on a house team but really those teams don’t get a lot of coverage. Sometimes an individual can join with another team (teams post that they need a goalie or a middie) but again, the teams want to promote their own kids so the orphans might not get a lot of playing time. Does Texas have an all-start team? Those are usually for summer tournament play, sort of a ‘super club’ team. If she does play in the showcases, she should email the coaches at the schools she is interested in and let them know what her schedule is, and how to recognize her (‘I’m playing on field 12 at 2 pm, I wear #5 and I have green laces in my cleats and have my stick wrapped with green tape’). The IWLCA games are all taped and all coaches have access.

Some of the top NESCAC schools have the top D3 lacrosse teams too, so if she’s not at a recruitable level, she’s not going to get help getting into the school and not going to make the team. Middlebury, for example, has the choice of all the 4.0s they want and only the top players are getting coach’s support for admissions. The Ivies also compete at the top level of D1 and don’t need bench players to bring up the team gpa. Her lax needs to be tops to attract attention.

She also needs to decide what she wants from playing in college (she doesn’t need to decide now). I know kids who got into elite D1 schools on top ranked teams, but they never saw playing time. My daughter wanted to play all the time so chose D2 and did indeed play almost every minute of her 4 years. The only time she wasn’t on the field is when they were ahead by 10 goals or if she was serving a penalty.

I do think it is worth it to go to as many camps as she can and you can afford.

7

Thank you for these comments. Which D2 schools are also really good academically? Twoinanddone where did your daughter go? Also my daughter’s club team does have 2 tournaments this summer, but we are thinking about sending her to a college playday or 2. What do you think about the one day program at Harvard? She has some academic camps this summer (creative writing, in a juried program (i.e. you send in a portfolio to be admitted) and a good pre-med week in Houston at MD Anderson) so can’t spend all summer on sports. She does run all summer and keeps up her stick work. She is very involved in academic pursuits and is looking for a research project so cannot spend all of her time on lacrosse. She is a good athlete. It will be interesting to see how she develops. Thanks for everyone’s expertise.

8

My daughter went to Florida Tech. She looked at some of the liberal arts colleges but wasn’t interested. We just hit a sweet spot where she could be an engineer, play lacrosse, and afford it. She was recruited by some D1 schools but she was really small as a junior in high school and even if she’d gotten in, I don’t think she would have seen much playing time. Going D2 just worked better for her. Size does matter. The girls playing on the top D1 teams are big. There a few who are a little smaller, but they are wicked fast. You are also dealing with being for a outlying state, which is anything other than the mid-atlantic or Long Island. The skills of those girls are amazing as most have been playing since the day they got out of a crib.

Rollins is an excellent D2 school. Love the coach

Some of the schools have 3 day camps. I remember there was one very close to the IWLCA showcase in mid July in Midlothian VA (Richmond). A lot of college coaches attend the IWLCA so many also at the camp. My daughter went to a 3-day at U of Denver and it was very good. My niece went to the Duke camp (excellent). The coach at U of Colorado is very very good and if they have a camp you could look into that (they had one over Christmas break so I don’t know about the summer). Syracuse coach has been working with younger girls for many years.

I think the academic camps are very important, but there are so many lacrosse camps over the summer she’ll find some to go to. Harvard has new coaches so I can’t tell you if the camp is good. The asst coaches were all-american college players.

9

I can only assume the poster meant to say will be, otherwise this could very well be one of the most ignorant statements ever written on CC. D3 schools ranked in the Top 20 Womern’s Lax include:
Amherst
Bowdoin
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
Colby
F&M
Middlebury
Trinity
Tufts
W&L
Wesleyan

10

Well they did include the NESCACs, which make up the majority of the list above. I believe they meant OTHER D3 schools would not be an academic fit. But really, every school has their share of academic superstars.

11

@TexasMathDad - Is there anyone at her club who is willing to give her an honest evaluation of where they see her fitting in at the next level? That would help you focus her recruiting efforts. I have a 2020 lax player . She is an excellent varsity athlete - top in all stats on her team (Which goes to the state championship every year), all state selection, has been a varsity starter for three sports since freshman year, etc., yet she is not at the level of the D1 athletes in her club program. My point is, it is hard to gauge where they best fit from varsity competition unless you are playing in a top lax area. Many club programs can connect you with private instructors for skill development.

Attending the Harvard camp, at the very least, would let the coach know your daughter is interested in Harvard and help your daughter figure out if she fits in athletically at the D1 level or if she is feels D3 might be a better fit. Dartmouth also has several camps. My daughter has focused strictly on high academic D3 schools and although coaches are able to communicate with you at any time (unlike D1), coaches really did not start contacting her until fall of her junior year, and we will not know if she will truly have a chance at playing until this summer, when the NESCAC schools start their pre-reads.

As far as athletic recruiting websites - the only real value is that they are a place to keep all her info, including film, in one place. My daughter’s club provides an online recruiting page on one of the big sites, but my daughter never emails coaches from the site nor has a coach ever reached out to her through the site. She sends personal emails with the link to the site included so coaches can see film, her gpa, test scores, etc.

There are several ways to get film, the most cost effective way is to film her HS games and teach yourself how to use iMovie to make short highlight videos. You can also buy video packages at all the major tourneys and they will edit film for you or just give you the full game footage. That usually runs anywhere from $150-$400 per tourney depending on the level of service you order. If she feels schools like Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Colby, Bates, Hamilton, Trinity (CT), University of Chicago, or Washington and Lee, would be a good fit, there are many D3 specific camps out there. Lacrosse Masters has several one and two day camps all over the country and Elite 180, a three day summer camp in Keene NH, is one of the best. Many schools have excellent club teams that are quite competitive, so that could always be an option at one of the bigger schools if playing D1 does not work out. US lacrosse ranks these teams on their website. Good luck! Enjoy the process, it goes by fast!!

12

I believe the reply in #8 refers to the comment in #3 above, not the original post, @taverngirl.

13

I totally agree with the advice of @xyz123a here. It’s important to get an honest assessment of where your daughter stands, especially if she’s not from a hotbed area. My D is a sophomore and we’re from Maryland where it’s hard to feel like you’re a top player sometimes, given that so many girls play at a high level. Going to the Lacrosse Masters events and to some school camps has been good because she has gotten a better sense for the overall pool of players and has performed well. On the other hand, I’ve seen parents who come from far away with girls who haven’t played a lot on the east coast and they are like a fish out of water when they come up against many of these MD, Long Island etc players (YMMV of course).

I think the Elite 180 camp is a good bet. My daughter is trying to fit that into her schedule this summer as well because it gives you a sense of many coaches and their styles. Once she sees how she matches up with other girls in her grad year and who she enjoys from a coaching perspective, that can help inform you of which individual camps to attend next fall (assuming the academics make sense too). Our daughter did Lacrosse Masters last summer and visited one NESCAC school that was nearby. The coaches were very nice to her and gave her a tour and talked about the team BUT they were not that interested in a rising sophomore because their focus was really rising seniors. That hasn’t stopped my daughter from reaching out this year (and she has gotten good replies from several D3 schools) but she’s aware that it’s early in the process.

Good luck.

14

I agree that doing the filming yourself is the cheapest, and most comprehensive, way of assembling film. It allows you to assemble footage from each season/team to show progress, which may be important to a coach. Start by looking on line for the examples of other recruiting films to see what others are giving the coaches, knowing that you will see great films and ones that coaches will turn off in ten seconds. Then buy a HD movie camera and tripod (essential). I agree that imovie will be fine.

Once you have that done for her freshman year, go ahead and have her email some NESCAC coaches with the film, with some other details of her season and academic achievements. Make sure to end the email with a question, like “what do you think of my tapes?” or “what do you think I should work on?” Don’t send the emails when the coaches are in season or during the post-season play (playoffs or NCAAs). Then be patient (up to two weeks) for responses, which I am confident she will receive – at least for some schools.

Then look closely at what the coaches say. Comments that invite continued communications don’t mean that she will be recruited (and you wouldn’t expect it this early), but are a clue that her ability is in range.

As far as camps go, be sure to try a local “throw-away” camp/showcase to get her used to camps before going to the ones that matter.

I also would look for a local Texas university that has lax as a sport (or something close to it, like soccer) and see if any of their trainers would moonlight and work one on one with your daughter on her training. We found this an excellent alternative to the commercial options, and also provide pocket money for the trainers.

15

I wanted to add that our team bought film packages ahead of tournaments (I organized). Once someone was willing to organize and front the money, most people jumped in. By the team everyone split the cost is was less than $20/family for President’s Cup and since most girls are thinking about playing in college is was worth the $20 to see if you got even 2 or 3 good plays on film for a tournament. This is a very good deal considering you would pay around $300 per family if you each went on your own. We used a variety of clips from different fall tournaments to put together film that my daughter could share with coaches after the season.

Both of us hate doing our own video on the sideline so this option is better for us and allows us to enjoy the game, but I know some people like filming. Just wanted to share another option.

16

One of the dads filmed all the high school games. Of course he was mostly filming his daughter, who played attack, but he got a lot of film of my daughter (middie) and shared with us. That was plenty of film for us. Also, all the coaches have access to ALL the “cup” tournaments and some prefer to see the players in a full game situation since an assist might be more important than a goal or clips of the big plays. The difficulty is in directing the coach to the right spot in the film.

17

Yes we have all of our high school games filmed and each player can go in and search by their number and isolate plays - so they can search for redefends or assists. It makes things a lot easier when trying to share with college coaches and not just showing goals.

We did have a few D3 coaches go in and watch full games from some “cup” events and from their responses it was clear they watched my daughter. I was surprised that these coaches went ahead and searched after she filled out the recruiting form on their website and then replied with details. Part of the challenge, I totally agree, is directing them to certain spots. Some games you have a lot of touches and some you don’t, especially if you’re not a midfielder.

18

My daughter plays D1 and was high academic. As she is an engineer, her choices were limited. some coaches don’t even want engineers on their roster. This goes back a few years, but good camps/showcases are Northstar Invitational, Nike Elite 120, Maximum Exposure, Nike Top of the Class, and any local prospect camp offered by a high academic college. Also, under Armour and WDNT tryouts are good as well. They all generated interest.

19

D3 schools in SoCal. Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Scripps and Pitzer. Demanding academics, everything from engineering to English majors. Havey Mudd/Claremont McKenna and Scripps field a combined team and Pomona and Pitzer field combined teams. Also recommend the NESCAC schools.

20

If west coast is an option, here’s another vote to consider the two 5C combinations mentioned by @mamom (CMS and PP). A look at both of their rosters will find numerous All-Americans and all-state players. While they are among the most selective colleges in the nation, they do operate a bit like the NESCAC model in giving tips to applicants who are academically and athletically talented. While it might be a year or so before you hear directly from their coaches, definitely put yourself on their radar by filling out the online recruiting forms. As @twoinanddone mentioned, she eventually will need to decide what she wants to do not only on the field, but also the classroom. Mine turned down DI/DII offers because they would not allow study abroad and gave the impression that there wouldn’t be a lot of time to do the volunteering, etc. needed for med school.