<p>fogfog and MaryOC, I guess I am asking this question because S’s teammates are currently asking club and HS coaches for recommendations to be considered for invites to “rising sophomore” and “rising Junior” showcases for next summer. We have always just done summer club lacrosse and instructional camps but a lot of young high school students have “moved on” from such camps and are only attending showcases in the hopes that they will be noticed by the swarms of coaches who are camped out on the sidelines. Personally, I think the state of lacrosse recruiting is insane! Many rising HS sophomores have already made verbal commitments to the top DI programs, including Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Duke, Notre Dame, UNC - to name just a few. And this is even before some of them have even played in a varsity game! Even some of the Ivies (Princeton, Cornell, etc) have received verbal commitments from several rising Juniors and perhaps even some rising sophomores (these are listed on Inside Lacrosse website). Many of these schools will have completed their recruiting classes early on and if a lax player is not recruited by Junior year, there are not a lot of spots left (at least at DI).</p>
<p>As I said, we don’t feel our son is physically ready to be competing with a lot of these guys or mentally ready to be looking at colleges! Specifically, I am concerned about him getting injured because he is very physical/aggressive but doesn’t weigh much. At the same time, he doesn’t want to be attending purely instructional camps where there are hardly any high school players and the skill level is not there. Also, the camps & showcases cost a lot of money so we want to choose wisely. I just wish the recruiting process for lacrosse was not so accelerated.</p>
<p>MaryOC, I noticed that same thing around here - that some kids are switching schools/repeating a grade. We took our son out of school to travel for a year (he was young for his grade) so this would not be an option for us at this point.</p>