LAX HEAD SUMMER BALL MAGAZINE INSIDE JUNE 2012 TOP 25 NATIONAL SUMMER PROGRAMS SUMMER LAX PROGRAMS IN THEIR FINEST DAYS

Transcription

1 INSIDE TOP 25 NATIONAL SUMMER PROGRAMS LAX HEAD MAGAZINE SUMMER BALL JUNE 2012 SUMMER LAX PROGRAMS IN THEIR FINEST DAYS

2 NO TIME LIKE SUMMER TIME What are You Doing to Improve Your Game this Off Season? Will Hazlehurst

3 STARTING EARLY I bet a lot of you thought the high-octane portion of amateur lacrosse ended several months ago. If so, riddle me this: What would you call a physical activity schemed-up by adults for children as young as 9 years old in which the little dudes scramble around an agro-asphalt complex of fields for up to a full day in temperatures as high as 105 degrees? If nothing familiar fits the description, your visceral response should probably be child abuse. This might apply, but in the Northeast and spreading across the country like a seductive whisper, we call it youth summer club lacrosse. When you finish reading this, you may consider me the biggest hypocrite going or the whistleblower whose time is long overdue, or maybe both. I have bought in big time, helping administer and coach a youth club team. I have also observed this athletic megalith with all of its grasping hands exposed. If you are totally unfamiliar with the enterprise, I was equally blissful three years ago. Now I am going to show you what has developed while you weren t paying attention. How big is this activity? Taking the measure of anything today is a euphemism for how many Google hits it returns. Try typing summer lacrosse tournaments the preferred venue of the clubs into this cloaked arbiter. I quit counting after 25 pages, with most of these containing 10 or more entries. Some are duplicative, but the sheer number of hits renders this negligible. In the end, I have no idea how many summer tournaments there are, but it wouldn t surprise me if it topped 100. The average tournament attracts 50 or more teams. Some attract several hundred. Each team typically pays $1,000

4 SWAG SPOTLIGHT- Adrenaline Trpoics UNIS SWAG Flint Michigan Tropics colors and logo BUCKET Flint Michigan Tropics style CPX-R SICK FLOW Usually referencing long, wavy or curly hair. (AKA Crispy Lettuce) Tap For More Info He is too good for this, he needs to play against better teams TWIG MIDCALFS Black nike mid-calf socks showing fierce style DANK MITTS Insane Yellow and Black Warrior Riots Mathcing uniform colors and shaft colors a pop. You re talking a $2,500,000 industry. It is probably at least twice this amount, perhaps exponentially larger, so realistically we have somehow spawned, without much swimming upstream, a $5 million-plus summer economy. Now you know why people are holding the tournaments. The real question is why parents are paying and the kids are playing. When I was growing up at the neo-plastic end of the Glory Days, if we played competitive lacrosse in the summer, it was in a local summer league. This didn t start until my early high school years, , and it was pretty raw. My first experience was at the dell now mostly parking lots at Loyola High School in Towson, Md. The field was a series of low hills, but it was hard to tell because it appeared they were trying to grow wheat grass in the same location. There were no coaches and no goalies. The hockey-sized goals were filled with discarded pieces of plywood, distinguishable by their splintered edges and Paleolithic paint markings. I was just old enough to drive myself, so I must have been a ninth-grader. I wasn t nearly the best player in this beta version of summer lacrosse, so I am glad the Division I coaching fraternity didn t line the field in their Boca Raton retirement chairs. I certainly wouldn t have been offered the sophomore scholarship, but I weighed 50 pounds less than two years later in my junior year of high school. But who could anticipate a high school freshman growing? SHORTS SWAG Orange and Yellow colors with a textured design FANCY FOOTWEAR Vibrant Green and Yellow Under Armor Highlight cleats

5 INSIDE TOP 25 NATIONAL SUMMER PROGRAMS JUNE 2012 AX HEAD MAGAZINE SUMMER BALL 8KEY ELEMENTS OF TERRIFFIC TEAM SWAG THE GOOD OLD DAYS SUMMER LAX PROGRAMS IN THEIR FINEST DAYS

6 NO TIME LIKE UMMER TIME What are You Doing to Improve Your Game this Off Season? Will Hazlehurst

7 STARTING EARLY I bet a lot of you thought the high-octane portion of amateur lacrosse ended several months ago. If so, riddle me this: What would you call a physical activity schemedup by adults for children as young as 9 years old in which the little dudes scramble around an agro-asphalt complex of fields for up to a full day in temperatures as high as 105 degrees? If nothing familiar fits the description, your visceral response should probably be child abuse. This might apply, but in the Northeast and spreading across the country like a seductive whisper, we call it youth summer club lacrosse. When you finish reading this, you may consider me the biggest hypocrite going or the whistleblower whose time is long overdue, or maybe both. I have bought in big time, helping administer and coach a youth club team. I have also observed this athletic megalith with all of its grasping hands exposed. If you are totally unfamiliar with the enterprise, I was equally blissful three years ago. Now I am going to show you what has developed while you weren t paying attention. How big is this activity? Taking the measure of anything today is a euphemism for how many Google hits it returns. Try typing summer lacrosse tournaments the preferred venue of the clubs into this cloaked arbiter. I quit counting after 25 pages, with most of these containing 10 or more entries. Some are duplicative, but the sheer number of hits renders this negligible. In the end, I have no idea how many summer tournaments there are, but it wouldn t surprise me if it topped 100. The average tournament attracts 50 or more teams. Some attract several hundred. Each team typically pays $1,000

8 a pop. You re talking a $2,500,000 industry. It is probably at least twice this amount, perhaps exponentially larger, so realistically we have somehow spawned, without much swimming upstream, a $5 million-plus summer economy. Now you He is too good for this, he needs to play against better competition. know why people are holding the tournaments. The real question is why parents are paying and the kids are playing. When I was growing up at the neo-plastic end of the Glory Days, if we played competitive lacrosse in the summer, it was in a local summer league. This didn t start until my early high school years, , and it was pretty raw. My first experience was at the dell now mostly parking lots at Loyola High School in Towson, Md. The field was a series of low hills, but SWAG UNIS SWAG Flint Michigan Tropics colors and logo SPOTLIGHT- BUCKET Flint Michigan Tropics style CPX-R it was hard to tell because it appeared they were trying to grow wheat grass in the same location. There were no coaches and no goalies. The hockey-sized goals were filled with discarded pieces of plywood, distinguishable by their splintered edges and Paleolithic paint markings. I was just old enough to drive myself, so I must have been a ninth-grader. I wasn t nearly the best player in this beta version of summer lacrosse, so I am glad the Division I coaching fraternity didn t line the field in their Boca Raton retirement chairs. I certainly wouldn t have been offered the sophomore scholarship, but I weighed 50 pounds less than two years later in my junior year of high school. But who could anticipate a high school freshman growing? Adrenaline Trpoics SICK FLOW Tap For Usually referencing More long, Info wavy or curly hair. (AKA Crispy Lettuce) DANK MITTS Insane Yellow and Black Warrior Riots TWIG Mathcing uniform colors and shaft colors SHORTS SWAG Orange and Yellow colors with a textured design MIDCALFS Black nike mid-calf socks showing fierce style FANCY FOOTWEAR Vibrant Green and Yellow Under Armor Highlight cleats