For all of these, please check the dates. For more information on college recruiting, see the following Kudda videos on recruiting

• Rutgers MVP- June 13-15th… Run by Rutgers University is a team camp. Players stay at one of the many campuses at Rutgers in AC dorms. Teams check in on Friday w/ their first game that night. They have 3 more games on Saturday w/ one last game Sunday before playoffs begin. They have 10 fields and lots of teams in attendance. At each of the fields they had 4-5 college coaches w/ more watching the better teams. I would recommend skipping staying in the dorm and just staying in a hotel in your parents. Parents are already paying for a hotel to stay… save some bucks and stay w/ parents. Try to get other parents to do the same. Plenty of hotels around the area. Pretty isolated campus as far as finding a close place to eat. Actually have to go downtown as there is nothing convenient.
• Top 205, June 21-24? is run by Tony Seaman, Tierney and Cottle. Hosted at Towson University. Players stay overnight in the dorms which have AC.
  In order to get into this camp, HS players need to be recommended by their HS coach. I’m not sure if there is a limit of how many recommendations each coach can submit, I’m thinking eight for some reason. Players arrive on a Saturday and there is a tryout/evaluation that night w/ team selections taking place. Sunday morning is a team practice followed by 2 games later in the day. There are 3 games Monday w/ a final game on Tuesday morning. The teams are coached by college coaches from different levels. There are 4 fields that have games but most of the coaches stayed on the 2 adjacent fields so they could watch a half of one game and then turn their chairs around to watch the other game. There seemed to be 75-100 coaches watching those games. If you’re not scheduled to play on that field…chances are slim that college coaches will see you play.
  There is an All-Star game scheduled, although it was canceled last year due to the New York players having to leave early to take their exams.
• Ultimate Performance Lacrosse- June 27 & 28
  Run by John Tillman and Charlie Toomey. They have 2 sessions. From a parent’s point of view, this is the best camp/tourney. Teams have 4 games during the day with an hour off in between. Simply a round robin format with no playoffs… just play. Make sure to bring extra middies as it is hot and they play a lot of lax in a short amount of time. Lots of college coaches are there with the majority of them hanging out at the stadium field. If you’re out of town, Annapolis is a short drive and I would recommend staying near there. Especially if you’re playing on both days. They also have another tourney in the Fall with the same format and exposure. The Fall tourney is key for those juniors trying to get seen one more time.
• Gait Cup- July 2-5. Run by Gettysburg College. Players stay in the dorms…some have AC while others do not. Club teams sign up and are guaranteed 7 games. The first 5 are round-robin and then teams are seeded for a tournament.
  Teams arrive on Wednesday afternoon with the first games played Wednesday night. They have 3 more Thursday and 1 more Friday morning before playoffs. Depending on the field location, you could have 8-10 college coaches watching or on some fields…none. Seems that some teams didn’t get to play on the high-visibility fields while others were always there. I didn’t see as many college coaches as I have seen at other tourneys.
  There is also an All Star game Friday night which is well attended by college coaches, as well as all of teams. Very supportive crowds!!!
  Unfortunately, the scheduling of this camp coincided w/ July 4th weekend as well as the Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Getting around Gettysburg and trying to find a hotel room was very difficult.
• Shootout- July 20-23. This is also a team camp…more so HS teams instead of Club teams. Run by Don Zimmerman at UMBC and Dave Ulrich from Georgetown. Teams play 1 game Sunday w/ 3 each on Monday and Tuesday. There is one more on Wed as well as a playoff game or two. They have 4 games going on at a time and there are 15-20 college coaches at each of the games. Very easy to get in and out of. Very easy to watch other teams play before or after team plays. Plenty of hotels in area.

I also just finished reading Meat Market by ESPN reporter Bruce Feldman. Feldman spent a year embedded with the University of Mississippi’s football coaches as they went through the process of recruiting their players. Although there were far too many names of both coaches and players and it was hard to keep everyone straight, the book did a great job of exposing all of the ins and outs of the recruiting process. Now granted, recruiting in the SEC might be a little bit more competitive than other conferences, but it was interesting to see this process from both the players’ and the coaches’ perspectives.
Some highlights of the book…

1) Verbal commitments mean absolutely nothing. It is routine for players to verbally commit and then jump ship several times before officially signing with a college. What bothers me is that the players have no sense of what the word, commitment, means. I suppose that verbal commitments are just an archaic tradition left over from the days when a verbal commitment meant something.

2) I have tremendous respect for the coaches and the time they invest in recruiting. Ole Miss has the reputation as the hardest working group of recruiters. They spend thousands of hours watching game and highlight tapes trying to find those players that can help their program. Their analysis of these videos is brutally candid. In one video, they will rip apart a potential recruit for not being flexible enough or quick enough and then for the next player, watch 30 seconds and offer that player a scholarship right on the spot. These coaches also spend all of their time, either coaching Ole Miss, watching recruiting tapes, watching HS football games live, or traveling to meet w/ recruits. There is no off-season or slow-season for these coaches.

3) The importance of grades and character of the player in the process. So many outstanding players can’t play in college because of grades. Now there are lots of ways coaches can try to get around bad grades. There are on-line courses that players can take from BYU which help to increase their GPA… borderline diploma mills. There are post grad/military schools that players can go to for a year until they become eligible… but not a guarantee either. The coaches are also looking at attitudes and work ethics. Many of their recruits get left out because of character issues.

4) National Signing Day is the Day of reckoning for these coaches. This is when all of their efforts get measured. Can you imagine having your emotional well-being, future, and job evaluation be determined by the decision-making-process of an 18 year old?
ESPN has now made this day into a huge event so we’re able to see the antics of these future stars. How many more times do we need to see some selfish kid put on a college hat, take it off and put 2-3 more hats on, trying to build the suspense, before committing. Better yet, why are we glorifying these players and giving them this opportunity?
Overall, good read and very enlightening.

This weekend marks the beginning of the club lacrosse summer recruiting tournaments. For some of the Mid-Atlantic girls clubs, they have the Charm City classic outside of Baltimore and for the HS boys; there is the Rutgers MVP camp. From now until the end of July, every weekend will have a tournament or camp where college coaches will be evaluating players’ skills. It is pretty exciting to look around on the sidelines and see a lot of top D1 coaches watching a game where your kid is playing, knowing that if they play well, they might be getting some interest from these coaches. Unfortunately for many parents, they take this as the only opportunity that their kid will have to shine. Thus more pressure is placed on their kid to perform, which usually doesn’t happen in those stressed situations.
So let’s say that your little sweetie pie doesn’t have the game of her life or that Jr got stripped of the ball in right in front of the Harvard coaches. You think to yourself, “It’s all over! They’ll never get any interest now!” Hold on as this isn’t the “death sentence” that you think it is. Coaches are looking at a variety of factors/skills during these summer games.
Several of the coaches interviewed mentioned that they are looking for lacrosse players and good athletes first. Not too many were looking for positional players: with the exception of goalies. Most are looking for the type of athlete that will fit into their system of play. Check out these interviews by clicking on the Recruiting Clinic near the top of the video player.

Most coaches know that your kid is going to make a mistake or two. The key thing that they look for is how your kid handles themselves afterwards. Janine Tucker, head women’s coach at Johns Hopkins, looks for girls who sulk or point fingers at other teammates. Janine asks, “Do they give up or go 120% for that next groundball?” Georgetown Head Coach Ricky Fried calls this,”the competitive nature”. What is their reaction to a mistake? A common theme that a lot of coaches mentioned were, “How does the player deal w/ adversity?” Does this light a spark in the player or does it, “cause them to have a mental breakdown and require therapy?”
Another area that coaches notice is how the players interact between games. “Coaches want social players that are willing to be part of a team,” says Janine. Do the players isolate themselves in between games or are they in the thick of things?
Coaches are also watching for any negative behavior from parents. Are parents over-bearing? Coaching from the sidelines? Screaming at the referees? Coaches don’t want a “head case” parent involved in their program for the next few years so parents, be aware that you can adversely affect your kids appeal. Speaking of parents, coaches are also very cognizant of how players interact with their parents. Anne Phillips watches this closely for any signs of disrespect or condescending behavior.
So just because Jr and the “Little Princess”, in your eyes, dropped the ball, it doesn’t mean that college coaches think they dropped the ball. There seems to be plenty of opportunities for them to show the coaches some of their other qualities. Conversely, just because they scored 5 goals or got every ground ball, it doesn’t mean the coaches want them if the players are selfish and high maintenance.