Looking for any feedback regarding high-level coaching/programs for boarding schools. We are currently in a non-lacrosse hotbed and often travel for tournaments/showcases.
Also, our current private school limits team off-season training. Is this the case for most boarding schools as well, or can they train more often? I am sure they still want athletes participating in more than one sport, but my daughter only loves lacrosse (and likes field hockey).
Finally, are students allowed to leave once every month or two for outside tournaments while not in season?
Our 8th-grade daughter is a LAX goalie heading to boarding school for HS, and we just went through the process of investigating these sorts of questions. The basic answer is it varies between programs, so you definitely want to make a point of connecting with coaches and asking them any questions you might have before you apply, no later than interview visits if you do those (we found it very useful to meet with coaches, and often players, in person).
I note when it comes to travel, you can look up prior seasons at places like LaxNumbers to quickly see where a team has been going. As I am sure you are aware, high schools in “hot bed” areas are likely to have a lot more local games, although they may also travel at least a bit to other states/regions.
If you look at the rosters of any highly ranked D3 or Ivy school, you’ll find players who attended boarding schools and of course received very high level coaching while at school. Most also play for a club team in the summer and attend the summer tournaments in Virginia, Mass, DC, etc.
Or you can look at the rosters of the boarding schools you are interested in and see where the players are heading to play in college. Often the juniors and seniors have their intended colleges listed.
One girl I know went to Lawrenceville, played for her local club team in the summer(which she had played for before boarding school), and played at Cornell.
This will greatly vary by school and is worth reaching out to individual coaches about. There is a program called Road 2 Prep that hosts recruiting events in September for both boys and girls lacrosse, that is also worth looking into. I personally know girls lax players at Williston and Choate who also play for club teams and participate in outside tournaments. I am pretty sure other schools like Taft, Loomis, etc, also allow this but arranging transportation can be tricky depending on where you are/what club you are playing for. A good way to get a sense is to follow school-specific girls lacrosse team instagram pages - they will sometimes re-post when their athletes are participating in national club tournaments (also true of field hockey). And they will always post the college level commits - the students getting recruited at high level college programs are at the very least playing club over the summer.
@twoinanddone Thanks - that is a good idea to work backwards from D3/Ivy. I am also researching Lawrenceville. They have Saturday classes a few weekends a month, which I would think would complicate things with any lacrosse tournaments/showcases. To your point, your friend obviously navigated this somehow.
Thank you @NiceUnparticularMan . The LaxNumbers site is great and does help with recruiting classes. I also just subscribed to New England Lacrosse Journal to try to get some insight.
@Publisher Thanks for this list. Another BS we are researching is the Episcopal School in Alexandria. They seem to be growing their program, and their coach has been very proactive. We are going to watch a game and visit the school this spring (along with a few others), and I will be happy to report back.
Thanks @ssdh25 I did see Road2Prep recruiting events. I wasn’t sure if that is something where I need to buy into their service to have my daughter participate in. Thanks for the reminder; I will research further. It does seem like there is a connection with Choate and Gold Coast Lacrosse. Originally, I liked the idea of 100% residential, but I can also see the benefit of having local students/teammates to carpool with for practice in the offseason (if allowed).
I will admit that she had a family history of attending L’ville, with her dad, 2 brothers and I think a grandfather who attended and at least dad and brothers playing lax, so knew the system. I don’t know if she played fall ball with a local club or just spring lax for L’ville (I’m thinking just the school team and summers on her old club team to travel to the showcase tourneys). She may have played field hockey in the fall as many east coast girls lax players do.
My daughter played fall ball with her high school team and with her college team. I can’t say she improved all that much with fall ball and she would have been just fine playing another sport in the fall. Four players on her college team had been recruited from the soccer team, so they played soccer in the fall. It was a lot more social and just keeping in shape than it was ‘improvement.’ She did play on a club team in hs in the summers, and that was mostly for exposure to college coaches, but she liked it and we liked her club coach a lot.
I note we learned that at schools like Episcopal, even though it is 100% boarding, enough kids are from nearby there can be something of a similar effect. Of course there are kids from all over as well, but I am pretty sure Virginia and Maryland are consistently among their top states, and I got the impression a good number of them were from the Greater DC region specifically. I’m sure Coach Boyum would be happy to discuss what that can mean for her LAX players.
Of course Episcopal is pretty unusual in that it is 100% boarding but also right in the heart of a major metro. But my two cents is even if a school had some day students, it could in fact be worth considering the possible pros of such a location.
Fwiw, most of the kids at DS’ school who played club sports hitched rides to practice with day students. In fact, many of those day students paved the way for their boarder friends/teammates to try out, etc.
This isn’t to say there aren’t other options (there were girls at SPS who played club volleyball and worked out transportation as a group), but you should definitely chase down details for each school. Some make it easier than others.
I’d also be very careful drawing conclusions about the BS to college path. It’s not unusual for the kids that are being recruited to be getting interest as a result of club participation, which is possible because they are already part of a local club team.
Thank you, @gardenstategal. I agree that BS wouldn’t be the recruitment hook. I am looking for a school that my daughter can enjoy playing with, both on and off-season. She is the only club player at her current school, and she would rather play a different spring sport than lacrosse. It is a bummer if she missed out on being part of a team in a sport she loves. She is on a top-ranked team in the country, but since we are out of state, she doesn’t see her teammates often.
I think you are right that one of the biggest variables is whether many of the girls from the school team doing year-round lacrosse are going to be playing with each other in those contexts. That’s sort of automatic with day schools and public feeder schools–like I know lots of the varsity athletes at our S24’s day school were on club teams together as well. But not so automatic with boarding schools . . . but I do think it happens more often at some schools than others.
So if that is what she ideally wants, she can try to craft a list around that goal. In the end I am not sure her full list would look like that. Maybe, but even if not, I think it would be reasonable to include as many as possible, and then see what happens with admissions offers.
I don’t understand. Lax is a spring sport. Most clubs take the spring ‘off’ so that their players can play on their hs teams and then regroup in May for summer play, then fall, etc.
@twoinanddone I mean that it would be fun for her to be on a competitive school team. She would rather participate in track or softball than be beaten 20-0 by schoolmates who have never played before.
We visited Episcopal High School last week and were very impressed. The campus is 10 min from the airport, and Alexandria is beautiful. The campus grounds and dorms (new for Freshmen as of a few years ago) were great. The theater was only okay, but that does not move the needle for my daughter. I could see it being a deal breaker for others. It looked like an 8:1 ratio of students to teachers in most of the classes we saw, and students were all engaged.
We also went to the chapel service and ate in the lunchroom. All of the students seemed kind, happy to be there, and were more than willing to visit with us. They do not have AP classes, but students in the “advanced” courses all take the AP exams.
They do not have Saturday classes, which I think we prefer. I also like that it is near a major city - I know others would like the opposite. The girls’ lacrosse program is still growing, but we were blown away by the coach. She definitely has a vision for the program and is actively recruiting strong club players. We watched their Friday game. They have a great stadium with lights, and it was awesome to see the boys’ lacrosse team there cheering them on.
This is our first boarding school visit, but our kids are in the top 50 private schools (if you can rely on *Niche rankings *you can’t) and have somewhat of a benchmark in what we are looking for.
We drove by Madeira School, but we knew that they were on break. Further out from the city and they are building a new equastrian center. That is something else that is not a priority for us, but I wanted to share it for others.
I am happy to answer any questions and will share more info as we visit other schools. I also appreciate any insight others have!
Did you already make a decision? I assume so given the timing. I have daughter at EHS playing travel lacrosse and am happy to weigh in more if it’s still helpful.
Most boarding schools will limit off season training. However IMG and Masters Academy International in New England have year round training models. The girls lacrosse coaches for Masters are posted on their instagram. masters has mostly coaches who were previously with the top New England boarding schools https://www.instagram.com/mastersacademyinternational
I believe you can go to IMG website to find theirs. IMG has been around much longer as Masters will be newly open Sept 2026
But IMG wasn’t known for lacrosse, especially girls’ lax. You still aren’t going to find the level of lacrosse in Florida (or the other states with IMG academies) as in New England or the Atlantic states. If the coaches want to stay in NE, Masters might do just fine in attracting competitive teams.