The Recruiting Process

For high school players across North America, the goal and dream of a lot of players is to play college lacrosse in the NCAA. Here I'll go over some of the basic and simple steps to giving yourself a chance to be recruited and how to get noticed.

First things first, you need to gather some sort of film for yourself. Whether it be from a game you played in or clips of just yourself throughout your high school career, you need something to grab the coaches attention.

An alternative to doing this is to attend show case tournaments in the summer or fall where many coaches will be recruiting and looking for prospects. For instance, I attended this tournament a couple summers ago and prior to attending it, I sent emails to coaches who's school I was interested in letting them know I would be attending.

I never actually took this route, but at many tournaments there are companies that will offer to video tape you, and only you, so that you can put together a highlight package. Many of my friends used Lacrosse Recruits.





The second step, once connecting with a coach, is to talk school marks. For many Canadians like myself, we must take the SAT test by ourselves and coaches understand that and are patient with that.

So if your marks fall within the school's requirements, than you're sitting pretty... if the coach wants you.

From there on out, it is all numbers.

Schools who are Private do not give athletic scholarships. This may scare a lot of players away seeing as they are looking for the biggest and best scholarship offer. But, Private schools usually find a way to work around that and give plenty of little scholarships that add up, as well as financial aid.

Financial Aid can vary for every family, depending on parental marital status and income, and it can go all the way to whether you went to a Catholic high school or not. Point is, if a school wants you, they will make the best possible offer to get you to play for them.

Here is another link to a great guide on college recruiting for high school lacrosse players

Box Vs. Field

The difference in box and field lacrosse is like day and night. I'll go over just some of the basic differences between the two...

To start off, box lacrosse is mainly played in Canada and is played indoors on either a concrete floor or indoor turf floor.

Both have the goal of trying to score on the opposing team's goal, but field has 10 players including the goalie (3 attack, 3 midfield and 3 defense) whereas box has 6 players including the goalie.

Field Lacrosse is much bigger in the upper eastern U.S, and is layed out as shown in the top image, below. Box lacrosse is layed out like such in the bottom image...

To start, the nets of a box lacrosse net are 4x4 whereas the nets of field lacrosse are 6x6. As you can see from the picture below it may seem much more difficult to score in box lacrosse, but because of the way Field is played, it is equally difficult and just an overall different style of play.

Box vs Field

 

Another huge difference is the way the contact is allowed and played. In box lacrosse you are allowed to cross check the opposing player while he is in your defensive zone and the opposing team has the ball. In field lacrosse you are allowed to slash on any hand connected to the stick and you must "push" with two hands together.

The basic differences are...

• size of playing area
• size of net
• amount of players on field
• ways in which contact is used