NorCal Teams at Adrenaline Elite Shoot Out

[laxin94526]

I thought this topic was started to talk about "Nor Cal teams at Adrenaline Elite Shoot Out". I'm not sure how it got side
tracked into a coaches bashing / defending forum. I do not feel like this is appropriate under this thread and probably not something we sould get into anyway. It would get really ugly if every coach was exposed to this bashing / defending by all the people that contribute here. Just with the ultra competitive EBAL division, I'm sure everyone could throw out enough comments that would far exceed the memory capacity of my computer. Let's stop here.
As for the "Nor Cal teams at the Adrenaline elite shoot out", I see the "Inside Lacrosse" article about the event features a photo of the Nor Cal Braves team in action. Within the article, some great comments and photo of the Milk Men teams pinnies and shorts. Not sure what the win / loss record was, but the boys from Wisconsin had the best uniforms at the tournament.

[DlaxDad]

Here is the question I directed to Adrenaline Lacrosse. I have asked that I be permitted to post the response, but have not yet received that consent.

I did not limit myself to Brady's Bunch, and also referenced Las Vegas and the 2009 winners. I haven't decided what I'll do if consent is not given, but will jump off that bridge when I come to it:

Dear Adrenaline Lacrosse,

I am a long time participant -- well, my son is, anyway -- I just pay the bills -- in Adrenaline's team and some individual events, dating from middle school participation in the Adrenaline Challenge. In the past year my son attended High Rollers -- thanks for including him, as he had a terrific time, and we used some of Ted's footage in [the boy's] highlight reel -- the Challenge in January, and the Shoot Out this past weekend. We think the tournaments are wonderful, and certainly appreciate the recruiting exposure that all of the events bring to lacrosse in California and to the West.

I am participating at the moment in a pretty spirited debate on a lacrosse forum concerning eligibility for the most recent tournament, the Shoot Out. The tournament is described on your web site and in the West Side Lax coverage as being a recruiting tournament, and Adrenaline's web page says the tournament is for "ELITE High School Boys who have completed 9th - 11th grade."

My son's team was comprised of boys who are still in high school, and who had completed either ninth, tenth, or eleventh grade. The teams that contested the final, however, both had significant numbers of high school graduates -- Brady's Bunch had eight, according to a team parent; I don't know how many graduates the Las Vegas A team had. Several other teams had one or two high school graduates on their rosters. And as one of our posters pointed out, in 2009 the Shoot Out was won by a team comprised almost entirely, if not solely, of graduated seniors.

I'm of the school who believe that high school graduates ought not to be competing in a tournament that bills itself as being for high school boys. All of the graduates on Brady's Bunch are already committed to colleges, and so don't really need the exposure, and they don't appear to fall within Adrenaline's published eligibility guidelines. The same could be said for last year's champions, too. And if you're putting together a team of rising sophomores and juniors, on the assumption that you're going to be playing high school boys, you're going to be at a significant competitive disadvantage playing against teams with a bunch of graduated seniors.

I suppose you could change the eligibility requirements, but having teams of all graduated seniors would make the tournament pretty pointless as a recruiting venue.

I wonder what Adrenaline's position is on the participation of players who are no longer in high school in the Shoot Out. I'd appreciate some guidance, and an indication of what we should expect next year. Can our graduated seniors play? Can we put together a team entirely comprised of graduated seniors? Can graduated seniors participate in all teams, across the board? If that's the case, will Adrenaline change its published eligibility guidelines to reflect that recent graduates are invited to play, too?

Another possibility, of course, is that the company could enforce its existing eligibility rules. That's what I'd opt for personally. I think there are sufficient elite lacrosse players in the West to fill out a pretty good tournament, where everyone competes on a level playing field, and all of the players are still at least in theory subject to college recruitment.

Would appreciate whatever guidance the company can offer.

Thanks for all of your excellent work,

[numbersman]

Well at least it sounds like you got a response, which is a positive sign. Having a response that can be shared would help a little more to reduce the confusion

[DlaxDad]

I finally caught up with Rory from Adrenaline after the completion of the high school shoot out. We had an excellent conversation, which increased my appreciation of the competing interests involved in organizing and putting on the Elite Shoot Out. I know that the Adrenaline organization gets hit on a lot for perceptions of profit motive overriding other goals, but I have to say Rory seemed to me to be about providing opportunities for western players and growing the game. I give him big props for talking with me, and let me tell you, for a Middlebury grad it's tough to give props to a Tufts Jumbo, especially when you have to pass on congratulations for the D3 championship in the same breath. Here, verbatim, is what Rory wrote back in response to my inquiry. For what it's worth, I take him at his word:

First off, thanks for coming right to the source to find out some answers, I am happy to address everything in your email. Let me begin by saying that we take pride in putting on events that help stimulate and encourage the growth of lacrosse in the West, from the Youth through Elite levels, and eventually get as many kids recruited as we can. It sounds like your son has been through a lot of our events and I hope he has found them valuable.

As for some of your points, I will do my best to leave you with no questions, but please do not hesitate to provide me with more feedback should they fall short. The Elite Shootout is designed to provide a platform for recruiters to come and evaluate the talent out West and we have gotten a great amount of positive feedback from those recruiters over the years. Brady’s Bunch did have some graduated seniors on their roster, however there is nowhere that says that is against the rules, and something we will look at. There are other graduated seniors who you will find on some rosters and most of them are still looking for a place to play, so we do not have a strict ‘no graduated seniors’ policy at the moment, so no one was doing anything illegal.

That being said, we have a great group of recruiters and tournament directors (Notre Dame Head Coach Kevin Corrigan and Stony Brook Asst. Ryan Wellner for this past Shootout) and this group has expressed the fact that they like to see the competition between guys they know are going to college already and the majority of the rest who are being recruited. It gives them a way to judge talent. This is something that comes directly from their mouths. The recruiters who come to our events are professionals and know what they are doing, and most excel at their jobs. They make a point to see every team, know each and every situation (i.e. who is playing, who is what year, etc…), and will always find the right kids for their school from the pack. I can also add in here that a team like Brady’s Bunch will often attract more recruiters to games because although they might have 8 graduated guys, that means there are 17 who are very eligible and most likely talented, considering the success of the team in the past and therefore will bring some attention from the NCAA guys.

I do promise that we will look further into this issue, talk it over with some recruiters and staff, and do what we feel is best for the kids. I cannot say right now that we will exclude all graduated seniors, nor can I say we will allow any to play, we need to go over the pros and cons of both before making any decisions. At the end of the day, we were going with the idea that having the most talent out there will increase the overall talent in the tournament and attract more recruiters, which is our ultimate goal, however we will look into this idea again.

I know forums are a place where things can get out of control, people point fingers, and most hide behind a user name, so I appreciate your coming forward to directly address this issue with us. Please let me know if you have any further questions, any feedback or suggestions, as we are always looking for ways to improve our events.

[attackmom]

Thank you Dlaxdad!!!!

[DlaxDad]

I did suggest that Adrenaline might try to be a little more transparent in terms of what they put up on the web site about eligibility. A coach might decide that the high school boys on his team will get a better look, for a longer period of time if the roster has a few graduated seniors on it; as it stands, that option is kind of under the radar, as having graduates isn't something that's expressly condoned in Adrenaline's published materials.

One interesting point Rory made is that the tournament isn't really about winning -- it's about getting seen by coaches in a competitive setting. He also isn't convinced that there are enough elite level players in high school in the west to make the competitive level of the Elite Shoot Out consistent. Rory says he hears from coaches all the time who are short players -- the Snipers squad this year is a good example.

Again, my suggestion is just to be open about it -- stake out some position in public, whether it's having an exhibition team of graduates, or letting each team have up to six graduates (pick your number), or opening the tournament to graduates without limitation.

[picknroll]

Thanks for the follow up, DlaxDad.

I would add that I think Adrenaline is not much different than the other organizations that are running private leagues and tournaments in Nor Cal. There's always issues with getting enough guys on a team for offseason play so there's not such strict adherance to rules as we are accustomed in CIF or NCJLA competition. I took a U15 team to a post-season private tournament and was surprised to find one of opponents was mostly a HS JV team (9th graders) while my guys were all 8th graders. The game was competitve and we ended up tying in spite of the age difference so that team seemed to fit within the context and spirit of the tournament. I know that it's difficult to make lacrosse a viable private business so this older team didn't seem like a big deal to me and I never even mentioned it to anyone until this post. Also I am sure that somewhere in the rules of the tourney that JV players were eligible although my expectations were different just from conversations with organizers and other coaches. There are several other examples that I know of kids playing up or down to make numbers fit for teams in the off season or to get broad enough participation in off season tournaments. I think we should cut the private guys some slack in this area, at least for now. Threre's no crime in making money from lacrosse and we need a few guys being successful at it to help grow our off-season infrastructure. We don't need to put them under a microscope and expose all the warts. Just my $0.02.