So Duke typically get to pick off the best athletes and the last athlete from NJ that really made a difference at Duke was Brad Smith. Drago has a good frame and can certainly play there but playing early is probably not going to happen Unless he plays d-mid. West Essex has not played to toughest schedule. And I love how people who have no knowledge of lacrosse can espouse garbage like it is fact. There is a reason why the best athletes on several football teams are also lacrosse players and as a former football and lacrosse coach I can promise you that we had football coaches asking lacrosse players to play football just as often as the other way around. We also had wrestlers, hockey players, basketball players and soccer players who excelled at lacrosse
Definitely not true. Two guys that played D1 football and lacrosse who come to mind from last season are the Dmid from Maryland who is their best DB and the Uva middie who was all Pac 12 at LB from Stanford.
Neither one of them would be close to being considered the best on their team or even near that.
He's talking about a school from 15 years ago who was clearly trying to field a team getting players any way possible. They probably just started the program not long before.
Comical takes, to say the least.
There is no position called "point guard" on a lacrosse field.
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anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy
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Interesting so lets play it out.
Lets just take a recent rutgers kid who didn't even make the NBA in that height/weight range, Jacob Young. He's listed at 6'2 185. Now lets pretend he's played lax since like 4th grade and is now a college lax player. You're seriously going to try to make the case that some country club kid who's 5'10 195 has a snowballs chance in hell vs him? haha. We'll agree to disagree.
"Country club kid" lol.
It tells you he has no understanding of the game when he uses phrases like that. I belong to an elite country club. No one is playing lacrosse there lol. So far he's been proven wrong in every factual claim.
Jacob Young couldn't shoot. Has terrible hands for lacrosse. He would have been a defensive midfielder.
It tells you he has no understanding of the game when he uses phrases like that. I belong to an elite country club. No one is playing lacrosse there lol. So far he's been proven wrong in every factual claim.
Jacob Young couldn't shoot. Has terrible hands for lacrosse. He would have been a defensive midfielder.
Give me Christian Scarpello and he would eat Young Alive and then crush him on offense. Nice that you give that BB every advantage to make your point. Scarpello BTW, is a Rutgers grad who is 5”11 and 188. May not be as fast as Young but in the small space and the way lacrosse defense is played Young speed would be negated but how would he handle a kid like Jack Aimone let alone a kid like Brennan O’Neill or the Spalinna kid
Article on Drago from IL. It's no surprise his final two schools were Princeton and Duke after getting coaching from alums of those schools. There was no chance he was going to Syracuse.
Will be interesting to see how he does there. His brother hasn't sniffed the field at Syracuse and his position was a weak one for them.
Will be interesting to see how he does there. His brother hasn't sniffed the field at Syracuse and his position was a weak one for them.
Hitting isn't banned in lacrosse. I'm convinced he's never seen a game.
Basketball more physical than lacrosse lol
Basketball more physical than lacrosse lol
For reference. If you did this in basketball you'd get a 5 game suspension. In lacrosse you get high fives and atta boy from your coaches.
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anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy
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They play the puck and not the body 9 out of 10 times at the HS level. And this is coming from a guy who loves hockey and played back in HS.
It’s only been touched on surprisingly but I’m gonna reiterate the point that the stick is an absolute weapon in lax and only egregious stick fouls get called. My son and any of his teammates who can play even a little look like leopards after Every game. And I’m talking deep bruises not red marks.
You could always tell lacrosse players in school. Spring came around the short sleeves came out. Everyone's arms were black and blue and swollen.
Funny, never got that playing hoops. Nevermind the concussions, disclocated shoulder, and broken ribs. I wasn't in any way unique.
Funny, never got that playing hoops. Nevermind the concussions, disclocated shoulder, and broken ribs. I wasn't in any way unique.
100% and with the trend in padding(at least everywhere but the chest/heart) being less is more this won't change.
That's not a trend. It's always been that way. Call it young stupidity, bravado, or whatever, but guys always want the most freedom of movement possible. If that meant smaller arm pads or taking out the elbow padding, then so be it.
Most guys would probably wear helmets, gloves, and tiny elbow protectors and no shoulder pads if they had their way.
Most guys would probably wear helmets, gloves, and tiny elbow protectors and no shoulder pads if they had their way.
Hey do you remember when one of our guys was getting begged by the football team to play football
I do. I don't remember Coach Hayes begging any football players to play lacrosse, though we've had a couple of two sport guys play to great success. Al Ray looking at you!
Arm padding has gotten steadily lighter for the last 50 years, coinciding with the switch from wood sticks to plastic (which have grown increasingly lighter). If the. currrent padding was around during the wood sticks days most of the rosters would be out after the first game. That doesn't mean they the current sticks can't do serious damage cause the refs are allowing a lot more free swinging.
On the other hand the only people who wore shoulder pads were those who had suffered a separated shoulder Chest/heart are a legacy of Greg Boiardi.
My son played 4 years of football and never missed a play. His 3rd varsity lax game ever he gets cross checked from behind and fractured his wrist breaking his fall. Yeah lax isn’t physical 🤣.
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anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy
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Theres this napoleon complex with lax guys haha. For some reason they wanna believe theyre the toughest, most athletic and physical guys out there.
If anyone says anything short of that they just totally combust.
It is a sport that requires athleticism but again, really not all that physical, hard hits are penalized the overwhelming majority of the time and they just fail to recognize that if the best athletes played lax then alot of guys who are/were d1 wouldve never been d1. Same guys for hockey really. If the best athletes played hockey instead of say bball and football, the overwhleming majority of guys in the nhl would be cops, firemen and electricians.
Your response is overly simplistic. If our best athletes concentrated into any one sport the overall level of that sport would rise. However, most 300+ lb dudes would fail miserably on the lacrosse field, regardless of when they started playing the sport. That body type is built for 10-ish second spurts. Same thing goes for the 7 foot center. Only other sport they could realistically try to play would be baseball pitcher and that is so rare. There are very few Randy Johnsons out there. Further, give me your best hs basketball or football player in peak condition and I will break them within the first 20 minutes of a wrestling practice. Don’t believe me, just ask Micah Parsons or Stephen Neal who didn’t play a down of college football and then dominated on the OL in the NFL.
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anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy
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Im not saying you can pick up a lax stick and be great on day 1, thatd be a dumb thing to say. It’s a sport that requires practice and skill not just pure athleticism like a football TE for example.
What I’m saying is, if lets say football d1 Linebackers, db’s, de’s, rb’s, wr’s, te’s played lax since middle school theyd take over the sport. They are superior level of athletes to your traditional d1 lax player. Not a controversial opinion
There is a difference between potential and actual. I’m not sure that 40 times relate directly the skill set needed to play lacrosse. Jordan never made it in baseball. Deion did. Was Deion a better athlete than Jordan? In some respects yes, in others no. Deion could not have done what Jordan did on the basketball court. Didn’t have the size. But, he was much better suited to play baseball and his specific football position. The point is that your hypotheticals leave something to be desired.
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anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy
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Its significantly harder to be an all pro DB and all time great nba player than to be a great lax player. Come on… we have a plethora of great d1 lax players who are 5’8 and under. Our own leading scorer is 5’8. Someone will say “no hes listed at 5’9”, to which I say all listed heights are definitely accurate, they dont round up or add 1 inch, no way.
I haven’t heard anyone ever say it’s the most physical sport out there. It’s the little guys who can’t play it claiming it’s not a physical sport who have the Napoleon complex. You’re 5’6” and have claimed to be an exceptional athlete. Why didn’t you go dominate the state with your too 10 team to at was never a top 10 team? It should have been very easy for you.
You can keep lying about the 5’8” thing but no one believes you. Look at the 2023 AA list. Tell me who the 5’8” guys are. Answer? Zero.
I know lots of people like KYK. They grew up playing Pop Warner or AYF then put on shoulder pads in HS before they could shave and they think it was akin to surviving combat or something. I know because I played football (and hockey) and thought that way too. They believe football shits on everything else and won’t change their minds until their sons play lax or God forbid they pick up a stick and try to go topside, or take an 85 mile an hour step down to the inside of the thigh (brutal pain). Until then you can’t educate them because they think a sport that stops every 6 seconds is unparalleled in every way.
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I mean if you look at work to rest ratio and athletic demand soccer and lacrosse align much more. Football is a work to rest ration of 1:7 while lacrosse and soccer are a work to rest ratio of 1:2. And soccer and lacrosse fall into the category of work to active recovery and not even work to rest.
Also that is a very weird take. maybe 20 years ago teams were trying to convince football kids to come pick up a stick and play, but for the most part if you are picking up a stick in high school to fill out a roster the team is not going to be great.
Agree with all of this. And to that last point, I will echo that was my experience even at the middle school level. I coached my sons Pop Warner teams for years and when he decided to pick up a stick I said "ok cool lets recruit your best football teammates and build a monster lax team." We convinced several of our best football players to play lax too and Im not talking about our OLs or DTs. We got our MLB, WR/CB, RB, DE and put a REC team together that really passed the eyeball test. Us coaches knew from day 1 we could run with and bang our way to some wins. We definitely preached defense first until we could polish our game on offense. We were a good team but we couldn't be great and beat the Rumson or Shark River/Squan teams who were deep with measurables AND skill and this wasn't even at the HS level.
Would think you could put a rope unit together that could match the Rumsons. Attack would be a different story.
Exactly, I used to refer to our attack unit as a black hole, unfortunately. Any middie who can play well will play both sides of the field in most town REC programs so I guess in one sense we did have a decent rope line but it wasn't like we enjoyed the depth to specialize. Depth in most towns is the biggest challenge because its plenty hard to roll even 4 or 5 middies out there on gameday who can ball out. Goalie is another nightmare for most towns.
Funny thing is he wouldn’t make it through one lacrosse practice even in his high school hero days.
