RECRUITING
You see it in horror fi lms.
College coaches set up camp on the sideline at Jake Reed’s Nike Blue Chip event at UMBC in July 2011.
than 20 years ago, that’s how many players organizers and college coaches wanted to attend. The camp now has two rising senior sessions, a rising junior session, a rising sophomore session and a 205 West session in Colorado — all with more than 205 kids. Jake Reed’s Nike Blue Chip went from one group of 82 rising seniors in the summer of 2001 to four sessions covering every grade in 2012. The unrelated Blue Chip 225 also has expanded to include rising junior and rising sophomore camps. New England 150 now has three different dates. Showcase events like Champ Camp, Brine Shootout, Adrenaline Shootout and team camps like MVP Lacrosse have followed a similar trajectory. Not to mention the summer of “sizzles” and “slams” that now trickle into the fall and winter. “It’s a little like the Wild West,” said Hartford coach Peter Lawrence. “Everyone wants a club team.”
Club lacrosse allows athletes to play year round, benefi t from more talented teammates and learn from other coaches. Plus, college coaches pay more attention. Tierney said he watched just three high school games in person last year.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
A nervous pedestrian fi nds herself in a dark alley only to be ambushed. NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse advocates feel that way now. Accelerated recruiting — about a year behind the men, with high school juniors in focus — has sent their sport into a spiral. “There’s a really big culture of fear right now,” said Quinnipiac head coach Danie Caro. It’s a rat race for the high school athletes competing for scholarships (maximum of 12 for fully-funded programs), for coaches competing in an arena that has grown to more than 100 teams, for parents trying to pay for college and for club teams looking to turn a profi t by claiming they have the most players committed to colleges. “I had a sophomore tell me they step out at lunch time to call coaches,” said Notre Dame head coach Christine Halfpenny. “They sit in the car and make
calls to college coaches. I thought that was wildly outrageous to me. They should be eating lunch and getting ready for algebra.”
Some coaches want to ban all contact with sophomores, even on unoffi cial visits. But the NCAA won’t change anything without making sweeping changes across all sports. In fact, new legislation could lead to even less policing of the process. “Everything in the last year has been geared toward deregulation,” said Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel. “It’s fl oored us.”
Caro was president of the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association in 2008 when they sent a proposal to the recruiting subcommittee of the academics/ eligibility/compliance cabinet of the NCAA with recommendations to ban any offers before July 1 after an athlete’s junior year, increase regulation of third-party communication and further limit fall recruiting opportunities. “We saw it coming,” she said. “We’ve always known we didn’t want to go down the path of basketball, soccer and men’s lacrosse.” Even Caro, whose program is not a top-20 team, has fi nished recruiting her high school class of 2013. Last year’s college seniors were the fi rst class to commit mostly as juniors, Sailer and Kimel said. Offi cial visits were a formality. “It will change when you reach a critical mass of coaches who have made bad decisions and players who have made bad decisions,” Sailer said. “Then you might get a little bit of a pushback on it.”
Kelci Smesko (pictured), an All-American senior midfi elder out of Ridgewood (N.J.) High, had those concerns when she started to explore schools. “It was kind of scary to be 16 and have to think about what I was going to major in,” she said. “I wanted my heart to be fully in the school I chose. It didn’t come easy.” Smesko verbally committed to Duke in December of her junior year, but only after taking unoffi cial visits to four other schools. She’s one of the lucky ones. Schools will wait for a blue chip. She also has parents who steered her through the process. “That’s a good thing,” Halfpenny said. “They need as much mentoring and guidance as possible. It’s not a four-year choice — it’s a 40-year choice.”
— Justin Feil May 2012 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 47
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