good academic schools with varsity lacrosse

College Search & Lists
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<p>nahshimshimhaeyo,
I’m not playing in college, but I played lacrosse in high school. I played for a public school too, although I did play in a region (Northern Virginia) which is much better represented at the next level than the area you’re from. I had several friends go on to play various levels of college lacrosse, and a few more who went through the recruiting process. I’m no expert by any means, but I’ll try and help you.</p>

<p>Division I is almost certainly not going to happen for you. Because of title IX, there are only forty or so schools with Division one programs. Wagner College (and no offense intended to Wagner College or the Wagner College lacrosse team) is probably the worst D-I program right now. Over the last four years they’ve gone 3-54. Now take a look at some of the bios of the guys on the team: <a href=“http://wagnerathletics.cstv.com/sports/m-lacros/mtt/wagn-m-lacros-mtt.html[/url]”>http://wagnerathletics.cstv.com/sports/m-lacros/mtt/wagn-m-lacros-mtt.html&lt;/a&gt;
Wagner is unusual for D-I program in the sense that almost all of their players went to public schools. But in the descriptions of the guys on the team you see a lot of “four year starters”, and “team MVPs” in reference to their high school careers. Basically everyone on the team had more success on the high school level than you have. I don’t want to get your hopes down, but unless you have a lights out Junior year, you’re not going to be able to attract interest from even the Wagner’s of the world. </p>

<p>As I think you already understand, there is a wide talent disparity at the division three level. Some of the top Division III teams (or Salisbury at least) are better than a lot of D-I teams. There are a few division three teams (in all seriousness) that have less talent than your high school team. Here (via laxpower) is the complete list of D-III programs:<a href=“http://www.laxpower.com/update07/binmen/rating03.php#conferences[/url]”>http://www.laxpower.com/update07/binmen/rating03.php#conferences&lt;/a&gt;
There is no definitive line I can draw which divides programs you’re good enough to play for, and programs you’re not. </p>

<p>I’m pretty sure you’re not good enough to play for Salisbury, Gettysburg, Cortland, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Tufts, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Stevens Tech, Williams, W&L, SUNY Geneseo, RIT, Washington College, Hamden-Sydney, Ithaca and Trinity but I can’t say that for sure. I’m probably missing a few schools. The next thirty or so programs would probably be an uphill battle. </p>

<p>You have the right idea in trying to get yourself recruited. Get to as many camps as you can next summer, and get yourself in front of as many college coaches as possible. Make sure you let your high school coach know how serious you are about playing at the next level, some of those camps are hard to get into and he can lobby for you. I’m sure your coach has been through the recruiting game before. He can give you much better advice about where you can play on the next level than any anonymous poster on the internet who has never seen you play.</p>

<p>Lacrosse is different that basketball, or Soccer in that there really isn’t a club or AAU circuit. But there are a few summer teams that play in tournaments and go to recruiting camps. If there’s one of those in your area (or really anywhere in Delaware) you should try out. </p>

<p>This is process in which you should be proactive. After you have some varsity game film of yourself, send it to coaches of schools you’re interested in. I would look at the list of programs and go right on down the list and try and find schools you might be interested in.</p>

<p>Realistically there aren’t a lot of kids playing JV lacrosse for a public school in Delaware as sophomores who are going to be playing college lacrosse. If you work hard, are aggressive in the search, and realistic about the types of programs you can play for, you can make it happen (you’ll have a much better idea about where you can play when you start going to those camps). Good luck!</p>

<p>Also I just want to add that you have pretty good grades and can get into a lot of good schools on your own. The worse a D-III program is, the less pull, in all likelihood the coach is going to have in getting you into school. So I wouldn’t count on that helping you too much. A lot of “good” schools have club teams. Just another option to consider</p>

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<p>Faceoff Yearbook … comes out every spring. Has a list of every collegiate lacrosse program – with academic and contact info. </p>

<p>There’s a lot of info on this thread already – the OP needs to do some homework. </p>

<p>I can tell you that from our public high school, every kid that wants to play collegiate lacrosse is playing – either at the D1 final four level (GO BIG RED) down to the club level. </p>

<p>My son’s class <em>did</em> win the state championship their junior year, and his class had five (count them – five) high school All Americans, and two kids invited to the National Senior Showcase … in other words, this is a pretty strong program in a pretty strong area. The local paper just did a story on the 15 kids that are playing for teams in the NCAA tournments, both D1 and D3.</p>

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<p>My advice would be to look within leagues that have very strong programs, but at the schools with relatively weaker teams. </p>

<p>For example, NESCAC-- some NESCAC schools (Wesleyan, Middlebury, & Tufts) are VERY strong (and academic) D3 Lax schools. Maybe too high a level of lacrosse for you. But at other schools they play (Hamilton, Colby, Trinity, etc) you might be recruitable and all of them are very good schools. It is my personal theory that nobody in the middle of the league rankings wants their team to get whipped by a powerhouse team season after season and thus a good player will be recruited.</p>

<p>If money is an issue beyond “need,” you will need to shoot for schools that give out ‘merit’ awards to scholar athletes. You’d need to be in top ~15-20% of SATs and GPA as well as a top athlete to get these awards.</p>

<p>You can google NCAA D3 Lacrosse regional and national rankings and you will get more ideas for reach/match/safety schools offering lacrosse.</p>

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<p>Try this site:</p>

<p><a href=“http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/index.jsp[/url]”>http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/index.jsp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If you go through it, you will choose lacrosse and you will later have the opportunity to pick which divisions you want to look at. You can also enter a variety of other academic and non-academic factors.</p>

<p>A couple of comments. First, the pull a coach has depends on the school. Even lower ranked programs may have some good pull (I know for a fact that some do). Go to recruiting camps, but do not overdo it. Coaches often comment in articles about kids who they see repeatedly at camps and they view too much as a negative. Instead, try doing two or maybe three and pick camps with different coaching audiences (most camps can tell you who attended last year) and that are geared toward the level you are looking for. For example, maybe do a camp in PA and then one in New England. They will more than likely pull a different set of coaches, most of them being D-III, and will cover a wide swath of the D-III lax world.</p>

<p>cnp 55 has the same experience as my son’s HS. We too are a nationally known program and every current senior on the team who wanted to play in college has been successfully recruited somewhere. We have sent many, many kids to top D-I, D-II and D-III programs and this is actually the third time in the last 4 years that a kid from our HS will be playing in the D-I final fur. The kids have been stars (and even captains) for national championship teams. Therefore, our kids have an advantage in that the school itself peaks interest from coaches. It appears you will not have that advantage, but it does not mean you cannot play college lax, especially if you have a successful junior year.</p>

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<p>1 Salisbury 20-0
2 Western New Eng. 17-0
3 Keene St. 16-1<br>
4 Wesleyan (Conn.) 17-2
5 Nazareth 16-2<br>
6 Gettysburg 15-2
7 Cabrini 15-2
8 St. Lawrence 14-2
9 Kenyon 12-2
10 Ithaca 16-3
11 Endicott 15-3
12 Rochester Inst. 14-3
13 Stevens Institute 16-4
14 Hampden-Sydney 12-3
15 Roanoke 15-4
16 Lynchburg 13-4
17 Mount Ida 13-4
18 Merchant Marine 13-4
19 Tufts 13-4
20 Ohio Wesleyan 12-4
21 Denison 11-4
22 Villa Julie 11-4
23 Widener 12-5
24 Cortland St. 12-5
25 Oneonta St. 12-5</p>

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<p>a couple more comments.</p>

<p>A couple replies have implied you would have heard from DI programs by now if you ultimately would be recruited by them. There is a calendar for recruiting that all DI lacrosse coaches are supposed to follow … here is the URL … <a href=“http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/membership_svcs/recruiting_calendars/2006-07/DI_other.pdf[/url]”>http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/membership_svcs/recruiting_calendars/2006-07/DI_other.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. You are too young to be directly contacted by a DI coach at this time … they can not directly contact you until the summer after your junior year (they can respond to a contact from you however). </p>

<p>That said please be realistic about your chances to play at various schools. There are 57 DI lacrosse programs … or about 1600 players covering 4 years of players … about 400 players from each graduating high school class. There max scholarships allowed are 12.6 per team or about 700 possible DI lacrosse scholarships … or about 175 per year. Are you one of the best 400 (or 175) in the country in your grade? If you want to play DI you need to be.
Or said another way are you one of the best 10 players in Delaware in your grade? … because that is probably the max of how many will end up playing DI lacrosse. Playing DI in any sport, even “low” DI, is incredibly tough. DII is nearly as tough to get into while DIII offers a much bigger window of opportunity for kids to continue to play.</p>