Lacrosse Recruiting at Cornell

[big29red]

I just read a recruiting article at the Inside Lacrosse web site (my son is a HS player),and listed as 2010 top recruits as well as honorable mention recruits, had to be over 50 names w/ the college choice each athlete has made. Unfortunately, Cornell is not the final choice of any of these top athletes (many of who are Long Island products),not ONE! What gives??- I heard Tambroni is a great guy, the Big Red are always in the mix for an NCAA title, is it Ithaca or lack of athletic scholarships?

We should be cleaning up in NY, especially on LI!

[Robb]

I continually hear that Tambroni seems to be a genius at finding overlooked players or "diamonds in the rough" and building a competitive team out of them.

Question out of my ignorance:  Where did Glynn, Siebald, Moyer, etc appear on the list for their respective year?

Another thing to consider: does that list come out before or after the players make their commitment?  Did 17 out of the last 24 Mr. Hockey in Minnesota winners just happen to choose to play for the Gophers, or is the committee influenced by the players' choice of college, too?

[big29red]

I know Siebald was a top 20 recruit, not so sure of the others. The goalie recruit for '09 is a top 20 recruit, but everyone else I guess fits into the "diamond in in the rough" category.

Year after year, it seems we do not get the top recruits, but somehow manage to win. Imagine if we got a few more of these "studs".

[Chris '03]

[quote big29red]
Year after year, it seems we do not get the top recruits, but somehow manage to win. Imagine if we got a few more of these "studs".[/quote]

Then CU might be more like Virginia- a ton of individual talent too impressed with themselves to play as a team. The first shot of the game said a lot on saturday.

[Germ]

I'd rather have the "diamond in the rough" guy who blossoms into an All-American (like most of Tambroni's guys). It would appear they have more to prove since they were overlooked by the big schools. (ex Pannell)  

And I don't know how much stock we can put into these top recruit rankings.  What are they based on?  Heck, there are so many different lists.  After this year I'm confident that we can win it all without a team loaded with top recruits.

[big29red]

Agree....All Good Points- However, you are going to need a few horses to keep up w/ the other big boys, which is now starting to include teams like Brown, Harvard, and Notre Dame!

[Swampy]

Are people suggesting that Tambroni deliberately recruits diamonds in the rough rather than the high profile players? While a kid like Pannel is a great story -- too small to attract much attention until he shot up after a late puberty -- surely at least SOME of the highly ranked players are really deserving of their rankings. The fact that such players don't play well as a team at Virginia reflects more on Starsia than on the players themselves, and I bet at Cornell it would either be Tambroni's way or the highway. (Just as in hockey. Think of a certain hockey player who left after just one year.)

In other words, lacrosse is a sport that can be taught, one can learn, and in which one can improve considerably as a young adult. So a good coach can really make a difference. While turning a group of overlooked high school players into a team of over-achievers and a national title contender is a great story, I still think the coach would prefer to start with the most skilled and athletic players available. Maybe if we had a couple of extra very capable middies to rotate into the two lines, the fatigue on Monday wouldn't have been so great and we'd have our fourth title.

Nonetheless, the question still stands. Why are so few of Cornell's recruits among the most highly ranked high school players. Lack of athletic scholarships surely plays a part, as do admission standards. Compared to hockey, lacrosse players probably come from a higher socioeconomic group, so their need-based financial aid may not match athletic scholarships. Still, with so much of New York being a lacrosse hotbed, the contract colleges and New York state's financial aid should give Cornell a leg-up. Also, admission standards at places like Hopkins or UVA are not so much lower than Cornell's, and probably higher than for some colleges at Cornell.

This is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.

[ben03]

Nonetheless, the question still stands. Why are so few of Cornell's recruits among the most highly ranked high school players. Lack of athletic scholarships surely plays a part, as do admission standards. Compared to hockey, lacrosse players probably come from a higher socioeconomic group, so their need-based financial aid may not match athletic scholarships. Still, with so much of New York being a lacrosse hotbed, the contract colleges and New York state's financial aid should give Cornell a leg-up. Also, admission standards at places like Hopkins or UVA are not so much lower than Cornell's, and probably higher than for some colleges at Cornell.

This is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.

first, this game will do wonders for recruiting in the next few years.

second, Princeton gets blue chippers on their roster ... maybe it's their 6 National Championships since 1992. i think as long as Coach T is molding as QK says, "The West Genesee of college lacrosse." i'm happy to see us fighting it out in the FF next year for another shot at a NC! the recruits will come and i trust that Coach T gets the right ones to come to the east hill.

[gored]

Truthfully, I think the higher profile recruits will come.  It takes a while for the reputation as a contender to spread.  This is only our second final four trip since the 80's.  Current high school players don't know or care about our glory in the 70's or 80's.  They lived through our misery in the 90's and are only seeing us perform well the last few years.  With time we will get more of the top players.  We will never be Syracuse or Hopkins, but we can win a national championship and we will.

[TimV]

I'm pretty sure Glynn and Moyer were not on any of those lists.  What's interesting is to go back to those lists from 4 or more years ago and see how many of those stars didn't turn into anything special - or even play.  I'm away from my stash of Inside Lacrosse (that goes back to the years they were a newspaper thinner than The Sun,) but in this dreaded gap between the end of lacrosse season and the start of the NFL maybe I can get some data.

[ugarte]

[quote TimV]What's interesting is to go back to those lists from 4 or more years ago and see how many of those stars didn't turn into anything special - or even play. [/quote]
Some of that is probably the result of going to the same school as other blue-chippers. I'm sure every single one of them thinks that he is going to be the stud frosh who breaks into the lineup but only the best one will. The others will have to figure out a way to cope with no longer being the best player on his team and not everyone can do that. I'd guess that a lot of those blue-chippers-that-went-bust would have thrived if they had chosen, say, Brown over Virginia.

Steve Kerr once told a story about how only two schools recruited him out of high school. When he went to Gonzaga for a visit, their point guard made him look ridiculous and he never did get a scholarship offer. Kerr turned out to be a pretty solid player but he was no John Stockton.

[Weder]

How many lacrosse players actually get full scholarships? The NCAA limit is relatively low -- lower than it is for hockey, I'm pretty sure.

[ithacat]

I think SU's class was ranked #1 four years ago -- 2 NCs isn't too bad. I don't believe they've had a top-rated class since then.

[Robb]

[quote Weder]How many lacrosse players actually get full scholarships? The NCAA limit is relatively low -- lower than it is for hockey, I'm pretty sure.[/quote]I think you're allowed the equivalent of 12.5 (or so - I know it's not a whole number) full scholarships, and most D-1 rosters are 40+ players, so almost nobody gets a full ride.  If the best player on the team qualifies for need-based aid, you can be sure the coach isn't going to "waste" any athletic scholarship money on him, so it's impossible to really know who gets what.

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote Weder]How many lacrosse players actually get full scholarships? The NCAA limit is relatively low -- lower than it is for hockey, I'm pretty sure.[/quote]
I think the key thing is that athletic scholarship money can be targeted without respect to need in order to compete for the blue chip recruits.  Even for a family with $150-200k in income, $15k or so a year for four years is a not insignificant amount of money, and can sway a decision between academically comparable schools.