Nagowski has a recent MetaEzra post on his fascination with the sport of lacrosse, which includes a discussion about lacrosse’s association with elitism and how this breeds a particular kind of sports culture. He writes:
But there’s a glimmer of truth behind every stereotype. And just as Hotel students might have lower analytical capabilities than their peers in the engineering school, a casual glimpse at a lacrosse roster will yield more prep school students than you would expect from an otherwise random sample.
I won’t take up this issue at length here, but I merely wanted to suggest a pedestrian explanation for this “prep school trend” in college lacrosse rosters.
If you take a glance at the ice hockey roster, you’ll notice that only two of the men’s ice hockey players came from high school teams. That’s because ice hockey has a unique development system called Junior hockey. Between the ages of 16-18, promising players often leave their AAA or high school squads to play for junior teams. Unlike basketball and football, very few players go directly from high school varsity squads to the college or professional ranks.
A similar dynamic is present in lacrosse development. The crucial difference is that there isn’t any extensive, school-unaffiliated development system like Junior hockey (the U.S. has 14 Junior development leagues, and you can only guess how many Junior players there are in Canada). Instead of playing one or two years for a Junior squad, lacrosse players sometimes opt for a postgraduate/development year at a prep school before beginning their NCAA careers.
Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that a lot of lacrosse players come from prep school backgrounds, or any of the conclusions about the sports culture that these prep schools might breed. But if my analysis is correct– and I welcome any lacrosse experts’ corrections, since I’m not an expert on this sport– it at least suggests that the prep school trend in lacrosse rosters is not evidence that the sport of lacrosse is reserved for the wealthy New England elites.
With the notable exception of Pannell, I think most of the D-1 lacrosse players spend four years in high school and then go straight to college.
Really? I was under impression that a lot more did. Several kids from my high school went to D-1 and they all did post-graduate years at prep schools before going onto college lacrosse.
Maybe it’s possible that prospects go to prep schools after specifically being pointed out as lacrosse prospects. I don’t know how early lacrosse development usually starts.
I haven’t been able to find any definite statistics, but just from googling the topic it seems that the postgraduate year is a lively topic of discussion on forums and a lot of players are listed as having played a postgrad year.