College Lacrosse Recruiting is Spreading
May 20th, 2009 - byLacrosse Recruiting continues to expand west as the number of scholarship opportunities grows. The sport has seen explosive growth over the last 20 years and doesn’t appear to be slowing down. The Wall Street Journal reports on how the sports interest has grown at the high school and college level.
These days the sport is showing serious growth. Participation in high school lacrosse has about doubled this decade, to a total of 143,946 boys and girls playing on high school lacrosse teams in the 2007-08 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, which tracks participation by sport. In 2000-01, there were 74,225 high school lacrosse players.
And the fervor goes beyond high schools. A 2007 survey by the National Sporting Goods Association found an 
estimated 1.2 million Americans over age 7 had played lacrosse within the previous year — an increase of 40% since 1999.
Johns Hopkins is one of the 56 men’s Division 1 college lacrosse teams, based on NCAA data from the 2007-08 season. Including Divisions II and III, there are some 239 men’s college lacrosse teams nationwide with 8,900 athletes, double the number of participants two decades ago. On the women’s side, there are now more than 300 college lacrosse programs across Division I, II and III, according to the NCAA, triple the number seen two decades ago.
It’s also growing when compared to other sports. In the 2007-08 school year, 17 colleges added women’s lacrosse, more than any other sport. Meanwhile, a dozen men’s teams were added in 2007-08, far more than sports like basketball, which added three teams; football, which added two and baseball, which added just one team.
A number of factors have contributed to the sport’s growth, including an increase in media coverage, the availability of athletic scholarships and the sport’s growing appeal at schools west of the Mississippi. Indeed, the game has steadily migrated as former players and coaches moved West. Lacrosse Magazine says that of the 2,427 men’s lacrosse players on D-I rosters in 2009, 118 players came from five key Western states: California (55); Colorado (37); Washington (13); (Arizona (9) and Oregon (4.)
“The game has just exploded in the three years that I’ve lived in San Diego,” says Dave Herman, the varsity boys’ lacrosse coach at Francis Parker School in San Diego.
The availability of college scholarships is also a draw. Chuck Cohen, who helped launch a youth league in Orangetown, N.Y., that has grown from 70 boys in grades five through eight to more than 300 boys and girls from first to eighth grades, says, “Many of the D-1 teams are offering college scholarships, and there are tournaments and recruiting camps where college coaches can watch the kids play.”
As the talent base spreads from east to west and more college programs pop up on the map recruiting will become increasingly unpredicatable for college coaches. In the past a few top prorams could mine the east coast power houses for top talent while everyone else fought for scraps. With this expansion of talent more and more programs are closing the talent gap by recruiting nationally in areas that would have been unheard of only a few years ago.
Potential lacrosse recruits need to understand the fact there is simultaneously more opportunity and competition than ever before. Simply playing for a top program or shining in a showcase may not be enough to prove to a college coach that you are worth a scholarship.
