Deane's Daily News

Coach Deane's Recruiting Newsletter | March 2025

For those of you who have been with us for a while now, you may recall I used to send a newsletter to keep parents and players informed about the latest in club lacrosse and recruiting. Well, after a two-year hiatus, I’m back and excited to bring the newsletters back.

I feel this is particularly pertinent as the world of club lacrosse continues to evolve and change. My job is not only to provide a great experience on the field and successfully guide players throughout their lacrosse careers; I am also passionate about educating parents on the ins-and-outs of club lacrosse, to debunk myths that quickly grow and spread about best practices, and give you an inside look as to what college coaches care about – and what they don’t.

One thing I’ve seen lately is an increased concern with what team a kid is playing on – its prestige, success, and ranking – vs what team will offer the best training, coaching and development.

Player development is crucial, and club teams are not one size fits all. A good club lacrosse program should meet players where they are in their development, provide a competitive experience that pushes them to grow, and equips them with the skills and tools they need to continuously develop.

Unfortunately, what I’ve seen a lot of lately is players getting shopped around from team-to-team to ensure they are on a winning team. There is also a culture of parents competing with each other about which team their child is on and how much success their child’s team has had.

I’m here to share a couple of hard truths.

First, none of this matters. As someone who has played at the highest level and made my career in coaching and helping players get recruited, I can tell you that college coaches do not care how many club championships your child’s team wins or how highly ranked their club team is.

Second, this emphasis on playing on a winning team is sending the wrong message to kids. If parents move them around from team-to-team seeking the team where the player has the best chance of winning, it will only reinforce to them that winning is most important – even over development and growth.

Additionally, it takes the element of earning something, enduring hardships, working through challenges, and finding success through hard work out of the equation all together. The result is a generation of young people who aren’t prepared or equipped to face hardships.

50% of college lacrosse players do not make it through all four years of playing college lacrosse. They can’t handle the adversity of not playing, getting benched, or the discipline and demands required to be a college athlete.

I have been doing this a long time now, and I’ve pretty much seen it all. I’ve seen parents start their own club team because their kid was not playing enough; I’ve watched parents have their kids play on five different travel clubs in one year just to see them win multiple 8^th grade club lacrosse championships. I’ve seen parents so afraid of watching their kid fail that they step in and talk to club directors to find the one that will tell them what they want to hear.

As much as we have to build our kids up and equip them with great skills on the field, we have to let them fail, as well. Let them get uncomfortable, figure things out on their own, stick with something, see a commitment through, and learn to problem solve. It’s that discomfort and adversity where true growth really occurs. Those are skills that will serve them long after their lacrosse careers are over.

I always welcome any opportunity to discuss this and more. Feel free to reach out with questions.

‘Til next time,