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NY Times Article Shows Why Non-Hotbed Players Must Travel For Recruiting

Written by Lee Roggenburg on . Posted in .
St. Andrew’s Grant Mahler (2013)committed to Cornell
Some early commits for Florida include
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — When the junior varsity boys’ lacrosse team at Chaminade High School faced St. Anthony’s High School on Long Island in New York on Tuesday, a dozen Division I men’s lacrosse coaches were in the stands watching.
Seven sophomores playing in the game had already made verbal commitments to top college lacrosse programs around the country, before even putting on a varsity uniform or taking the SAT. The race for earlier and earlier commitments — the same rush that is well known in college men’s basketball and football — has spread to men’s lacrosse. “It’s really accelerated drastically,” said Jack Moran, the longtime Chaminade coach. “For the parents, if their kid is in 10th grade and they’ve heard that somebody has verbally committed and their kid hasn’t, they start to worry: ‘Is it too late? Did we miss the boat?’ ” Twelve of the top 20 lacrosse teams in the nation, including all four of the semifinalists (Duke, Maryland, Loyola of Maryland and Notre Dame) in the N.C.A.A. championships here at Gillette Stadium on Saturday, have already received a verbal commitment from a prospect in the Class of 2014, said Geoff Shannon, an associate editor at Inside Lacrosse magazine. “You feel like you should be going to the rec league game with 10-year-olds running around,” Drexel Coach Brian Voelker said. “It’s definitely not far off that a freshman’s going to commit.” Read the Rest of the Article in the NY Times

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