040 - Dennis Joyce - The Truth About College Recruiting

College recruiting has become loud, expensive, and emotional.

In this episode of the Three Phase Podcast, Joe LaLeune sits down with Dennis Joyce — better known as Laxdad — to break down what families consistently get wrong about college lacrosse recruiting… and what actually matters.

This isn’t a hype conversation.

It’s a real discussion about fit over logos, development over panic, and making decisions that still make sense four years from now.

Whether you’re navigating lacrosse, hockey, football, soccer — or simply making high-pressure life decisions — the principles in this episode apply.

Inside this conversation:

• The biggest mistakes families make with early commitments
• Why most showcase money is wasted
• How to interpret real recruiting interest versus noise
• Why system fit matters more than prestige
• The role of coach honesty
• And why patience may be the most underrated advantage in recruiting

If you value clarity over chaos, this episode will give you a smarter framework.

Connect with Dennis Joyce (Laxdad)

Website: https://laxdad.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laxdad

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Laxdad

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Transcript

Joe LaLeune (00:01.253)
So most families treat college lacrosse recruiting like it's a checklist, more showcases, more emails, more hype, but the kids who actually land in the right places aren't doing more, they're doing things in the right order. Today's conversation is about cutting through the noise and understanding what actually moves the needle forward. Today I'm joined by Dennis Joyce, better known as LaxDad or the voice behind LaxDad recruiting.

Dennis has built a following by calmly explaining the college lacrosse recruiting process in a way that actually reflects how coaches think, not how social media sells it. Dennis and I are just meeting for the first time today. I've been following his account for the last couple of months. Every time I, I let people know that I'm going to be doing an episode with you today, they all say, yeah, yeah, we're already following him where he's great. So that's a good thing to good place to start.

But what stood out to me is how grounded and honest your perspective is, especially having gone through the process yourself. In this episode, we're not ranking schools or promising scholarships or selling shortcuts or breaking down how recruiting actually works, what matters, what doesn't, and how families can make decisions that still make sense four years from now. So this will be a real world conversation for players, parents, and coaches who want clarity instead of chaos.

Dennis, welcome to the Three Face podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today.

Dennis Joyce (01:26.99)
Thanks Joe, I appreciate it. Hopefully we'll have a good conversation today.

Joe LaLeune (01:30.252)
I think we will. Do you mind giving us a little bit of background on how and what got you interested in starting this this social media page and kind of given some of that information out?

Dennis Joyce (01:41.41)
So I have been very lucky in my life to have three children who have taken my wife's athletic ability and have chosen to play lacrosse. they have all, well, one's done with college and played college lacrosse. One is in college playing lacrosse at the D1 level. And my youngest son is committed to play next year college lacrosse. So that's why I'm in it. I personally did not play lacrosse. So the lax dad recruiting is truly what it is. It's me as a

Joe LaLeune (01:55.78)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (02:02.873)
Nice.

Joe LaLeune (02:07.055)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (02:11.344)
trying to figure out all the nooks and crannies of this process and why did we start it? Real easy. I was answering all these questions anyway. So I got to the point where I was like, you know what, why don't I answer them once and that way I won't have to continually say the same thing over and over. So that's where we came out of.

Joe LaLeune (02:15.961)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (02:27.801)
Good thing. Good thing. Well, first of all, congratulations having three kids all go through the process and get to schools, which is a feat on its own. And, congratulations to your wife for her athletic ability.

Dennis Joyce (02:38.222)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (02:43.332)
That's great. So when families first enter the recruiting process, what do you think they misunderstand most about how college lacrosse recruiting actually works?

Dennis Joyce (02:53.742)
There are so many things that they misunderstand. And I think that's the biggest problem we have is they don't, first off, I think the biggest one is they don't understand how good or how bad their kids are. They don't understand where they are ranked and they don't understand how hard it is to play at the next level. And as a result of not understanding those two things, they're really not able to focus their energy and their money and their time on the places where we're most effective.

Joe LaLeune (03:05.167)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (03:23.286)
And that's what I see the most is, you know, I I answered, let's say a hundred or 200 direct messages a week from kids and from parents. And I would say 90 % of them all say the same thing. I can play mid level D one. Like, no, you can't. No, no, honestly, you can't. And, and, and again,

Joe LaLeune (03:38.154)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (03:44.256)
When you don't understand how, where you fit in the hierarchy and where, you know, how hard it is to play at these levels, you end up chasing dreams instead of, you know, trying to go after the real reality. There's a lot of places to play lacrosse in college. There's a lot of colleges, a lot of levels between the three NCAA levels, JUCO, MCLA, NIA. There are so many places where you can play lacrosse. And I see people focusing on just a small little crevice of the environment.

Joe LaLeune (04:00.303)
Yeah, it's super fascinating too, because I feel like it's people only really see the top end, know, maybe their exposure to it is like in the final four, and you sort of get a chance to see all three divisions of the NCAA league.

Dennis Joyce (04:14.16)
biggest thing.

Joe LaLeune (04:30.392)
But when you look at all the variety, even like club teams and stuff that are available, there is a huge span of what skill levels and athletic abilities are available to the, you know, the span of lacrosse as a sport.

Dennis Joyce (04:44.506)
I did just jump on that a little bit. We had two young men from my local high school who played with my youngest son who went to University of South Carolina and are playing club lacrosse down there. I'm going to tell you right now that.

Joe LaLeune (04:56.494)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (04:58.732)
That MCLA, that higher level MCLA lacrosse is fantastic lacrosse. And you get the full experience of being at a big, in this case, SEC school. It is an experience that I think a lot of people just don't realize exists. And it could be the perfect fit for people, but we have such tunnel vision as parents and as players. You know, it's the ESPN effect. It's the inside lacrosse effect where we just don't recognize the fact that there are so many options out there. And my son played division three lacrosse.

Joe LaLeune (05:03.127)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (05:07.565)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (05:13.857)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (05:28.896)
And I'm going to tell you, my daughter plays D1 right now. My son played D3. And the D3 experience from a parent's perspective is fantastic. They were able, I was able to enjoy it a lot more. It's more intimate. There's smaller crowds. There's less involved. My son had a much better experience in college because he wasn't a working stiff, working for the university.

Joe LaLeune (05:43.885)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (05:50.85)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (05:53.723)
I think that if people can take one thing away from this is that if they open up their blinders a little bit and look at all the things out there, they can find some fantastic fits.

Joe LaLeune (06:04.59)
Yeah, and we'll get into more of that in terms of how to find those. But where do you think that misunderstanding comes from? Do you think it's like social media, other parents or travel programs?

Dennis Joyce (06:16.312)
Can I say yes to all of those?

Joe LaLeune (06:17.983)
Yeah, all the above.

Dennis Joyce (06:18.668)
Yeah, it's a combination. think that it's, you I don't think that we've done the schools themselves don't do a very good job of kind of highlighting the fact that they have these great programs, the division twos, division threes, they just get drowned out by the noise. I mean, we you'll get 10 stories about UNC before you'll see one story about any D three, much less ones that you actually heard of. So I think there's a lot of noise out there that just drowns out the other levels. So that's that's a big one. But social media, you're hearing announcements, everyone if you think you're

Joe LaLeune (06:30.102)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (06:48.592)
if you're a 17, 18, 19 year old kid online today, everyone's going division one, right? Every announcement, you never see anyone say, well, I had to go D3 or I'm going MCLA. It's always like, I'm going to UNC, I'm going to Duke, going to Richmond. So I think there's just, you're not seeing the success stories at the other levels. So I think that that helps. And let's be honest, the clubs aren't helping very much. They...

Joe LaLeune (06:55.789)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (07:15.177)
I'll take that back a little bit. The good clubs are putting their kids in the right programs. And the bad clubs are selling dreams in order to make money. So there's a little bit of that noise also, where we're not really getting the focus that you should on the other levels. So there's a lot of noise, a lot of noise that's drowning out all the opportunities.

Joe LaLeune (07:20.812)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (07:37.218)
Yeah, maybe a good comparable like education wise is like a preparatory school that is they're really toting. Well, we sent this many kids to Harvard and this many kids to Yale, not for sports, but for academics. And that's sort of like what they hang their hat on. And for a lot of these like prep sport programs, they're hanging their hat on. We sent this many kids to division one and that's kind of their

They're sort of top tier of success when people are they're signing in and they're using that as sort of a recruiting methodology to get more people to sign up for the program.

Dennis Joyce (08:07.566)
100%. It's a marketing tool. My son played for Sweet Lacs Upstate. Great program. They're excellent at they do. I had a great experience with them. But they certainly use the success of the 26 class to make the 27 class better. It's a machine that kind of rolls downhill. So yeah, there's absolutely a marketing money making perspective of that.

Joe LaLeune (08:24.322)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (08:32.448)
What usually surprises families the most once they're actually in it, in this process?

Dennis Joyce (08:37.954)
I think a lot of parents when they're, especially, and again, I'm getting DMs from people who are like 30s, 2030s, 2029s, they're not in the recruiting process. They believe they are because they're hearing the hype. They're hearing the, have to be at these events. So I keep telling them, go, you want to be in the recruiting process so badly because you see all the success and the flowers and the social media posts, but it is actually miserable.

Joe LaLeune (08:45.1)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (09:06.434)
The process is anxiety driven. It's will drain your bank account, take away all your free time. It is not when people get done with the process and you ask them, what was the what was your thought before you went into the process? And what's the process when you got done? And they'll tell you it's completely different because it is rough.

Joe LaLeune (09:06.444)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (09:25.774)
The process is rough, and a lot of people just get burned out by it. There's a lot of chasing dreams and a lot of running around. And even for the most successful kids, they're going to play, before their junior year, they're playing 10, 9, 10, 11 events in a seven week period.

Joe LaLeune (09:45.068)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (09:45.493)
in 90 degree heat, it's draining physically, mentally, financially. That's probably the biggest thing. They just don't realize what they're going to themselves into. it can be, even for the most successful kids, it's hard.

Joe LaLeune (09:59.884)
Yeah, a lot of commitment there. How early do you see panic start to creep into the process? Like when people reaching out to you or, you know, parents you run into on the sidelines, what's the, maybe the earliest you've seen that panic start to creep in.

Dennis Joyce (10:12.43)
You know what, I wish I could say that it's people who are actually in the recruiting process. And so let's kind of frame that for people listening. The recruiting process technically starts on September 1st of your junior year. But we start really like six to eight months before that as people kind of play in tournaments and get viewed and everything else. So that's the time frame. So right now, the 27s are being looked at. And the 28s are on deck.

I'm getting notes from people who are 29s and 30s who say, I think I'm missing out. I'm not going to the right events right now. I'm really nervous that we're not setting ourselves up for the recruiting process.

Joe LaLeune (10:53.502)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (10:55.57)
my reaction is almost always the same, is like, hold your horses, relax. You're not, no one is watching you. No one is watching you. Now I will say this. If you are a five star, six foot four, 225 pound, 13 year old, you will get noticed, but you can stay in your backyard and get noticed. But for everyone else, there's a lot of panic way too early in the process. Now for kids who are in the recruiting, real recruiting,

Joe LaLeune (11:01.674)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (11:14.048)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (11:18.037)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (11:25.424)
cycle. You start seeing, normally it used to be you see people start panicking. If say the 27 class, they start panicking nowish, you know, where they're like, Oh, you know, we got past the timer first, I didn't get any calls. And they start getting nervous and the reaction is like, Hey, you got a whole summer still ahead of you. All the D threes and D twos are still looking for players. It's not a big deal. But you know, the real panic comes in when you get to August.

Joe LaLeune (11:36.084)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (11:53.815)
and kids haven't found homes, and then they start really panicking. But unfortunately, we're seeing that creeping earlier and earlier in this process, and it's terrible. It's horrible.

Joe LaLeune (12:05.195)
Do you think that has any crossover from other sports, like especially like European soccer where they're, you know, they're identifying players when they're eight and 10 years old and there, there is no boundary really on how early they start to, to look for and start developing these players. Do think there's like a bit of creep in from, from other sports where people just want to be found sooner?

Dennis Joyce (12:27.106)
Yeah, mean, if you remember, my oldest is old enough to be in that recruiting classes when they were getting recruited in eighth grade. They were committing kids to college in eighth and ninth grade.

Joe LaLeune (12:35.403)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (12:39.378)
And I think a lot of people, there's a good portion of people who would love to go back to that in some kind of weird, horrible way. They don't understand how detrimental that was. They want to get noticed. And the clubs leverage that. And the private equity who run the tournaments and showcases are feeding into that. have to be seen. You're not here. You're going to miss out on this great opportunity. yeah, it's definitely all the things you mentioned.

Joe LaLeune (12:46.877)
Nah.

Dennis Joyce (13:08.718)
We do not want to go backwards. We really need to get to the point where kids just are allowed to be kids until the end of 10th grade and then let them go through the recruiting process.

Joe LaLeune (13:20.33)
Yeah, it's kind of like a marketing strategy to like create scarcity or FOMO or, know, just fear of, of not getting identified early enough. But I'm sure like you probably would have seen it because you had a son in that, in that age bracket, but that's so much pressure on a eighth grader to be like, I'm going to go to, know, wherever you are and be recruited by these guys and be right. Like that's five years of anticipating landing on campus.

Dennis Joyce (13:48.431)
Yeah, mean, how many 13-year-olds know what they're going to have for dinner tonight, much less know what they're going to study in college and can pick a school based on anything other than the colors of the uniforms? And that's why we saw so many D commits and commits other places. And some kids who got committed, and no one talks about this, but the fact that a lot of kids committed when they were 13 or 14. And then the coaches said, you haven't gotten any bigger. You haven't gotten any faster. Your skills haven't gotten any better. And they dropped them.

Joe LaLeune (13:57.938)
Yeah, totally.

Dennis Joyce (14:17.262)
We don't hear that conversation, I know personally a number of people who lost their spots at significant schools because they were really good at 13, but they weren't really good at 17.

Joe LaLeune (14:29.555)
Yeah, no urgency to keep progressing.

Dennis Joyce (14:32.398)
Well, that's a big problem for everybody, but yeah, especially at that age, yeah. When you're a god and everyone's talking about you when you're 13, you can't do anything wrong.

Joe LaLeune (14:41.497)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you can just stop developing really If you could reset expectations for families on day one, what would you want them to understand?

Dennis Joyce (14:51.555)
goodness. There's so many things. I think that there are so that lacrosse is really important.

but the education is 10 times more important. And if you had a choice, we go into school A, who is division one, but the academics, and there are a number of schools out there, the academics are not as great. And you have D1 skills, but you can go to a solid D3, a Nescak, a William and Lee, a really good academic D3.

Yeah, sure, there's not going to be the scholarship, and there's not going to be as much swag and things like that. But you'll be so much better off at the end of it. And I think people really need to kind of assess what their goals are in this process. Why are you playing this game of lacrosse? I mean, the PLL is really nice, but no one gets rich playing in the PLL.

Joe LaLeune (15:33.129)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (15:45.417)
Yeah. And that's kind of always been the case with lacrosse has always been secondary careers or, or multiple jobs while playing, you know, as a side sport, you know, slowly moving, but ultimately it doesn't really look like it has the trajectory to be a full-time multimillion dollar a year sport as an athlete. So you really have to have the other skills in place. And yeah, like you're saying, like if you're just going because that school is one.

championships in the past, they have all-star guys who've gone to that school. It's not much of a holistic approach to the person you're trying to become, not just the experience you're trying to have.

Dennis Joyce (16:26.766)
Yeah, and you'll see kids picking schools purely by their level. For you know, they'll say I want to play D1. So I'll take a and I'm not going to pick on any schools because they're all good schools for particular things you want to study. But

Joe LaLeune (16:36.786)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (16:39.79)
I'll go to this particular school because it's D1, not because it has the best major or the best professors or has the right major or it's in the right city or it's the right size or it's the whatever criteria. There's a lot of kids who I talk to who go, you know what I really want from college? And I'm like, what? He goes, I want to go to a big time football game. And you go, you can do that.

Joe LaLeune (16:48.935)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (17:04.806)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (17:04.878)
Like, yeah, but I'm not good enough to play at Ohio State or Michigan. I'm like, yeah, but you can go to South Carolina and play in MCLA and have a fantastic experience. you still get the. So if you can identify as if you're a parent and you're talking to your kids, breaking down what they want. Like, when they get done, what are they going to be happy they did? And I can tell you from personal experience with my daughter.

Joe LaLeune (17:12.357)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (17:31.79)
You know, the swag they get, the piles of clothes, and the jackets, and the 10 pairs of shoes, and all the stuff they get, it gets old. And all of sudden, you're left with a school and your friends. And hopefully, you pick those for the right way.

Joe LaLeune (17:45.895)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, eventually the shine wears off and you don't want to be sold just on stuff. So this flows perfectly into this fit question. So when you talk about fit being more important than the level or logo, which is what we just talking about, what should players and parents really be evaluating? What do you think would be sort of top tier and working down from that of what is going to make the right fit for someone?

Dennis Joyce (17:52.093)
everything.

Dennis Joyce (18:16.582)
That goes back to my checklist. So you really need to break down what you want out of it. Because there's a lot of people who.

don't know what they want. I think parents are either really pushy, they really push their kids into a very particular niche, or they're like, hey, make the best decision you can. And I don't let my own children make the decisions on their own because they're dummies. And my kids are smart, but they're 16, 17, 18 years old, and they're going to make bad decisions. So we don't want to force a kid into a spot where we want it, but we do have to have conversations. And those conversations can be hard.

Joe LaLeune (18:42.331)
No.

Dennis Joyce (18:55.728)
And people don't know the answer. And not knowing the answer is OK also. Because you can start out with things like, what don't you want?

What do you, I don't want to be in a big city. I don't want to go to Temple because it's in the middle of Philadelphia and it's noisy and it's scary and okay. All right, that eliminates a good portion of schools. And now we can have, and if you can just go kind of backwards and eliminate schools or things you really don't want, we can really narrow down. If you happen to know what you want to study in school, which let's be honest, we all know, or maybe even yourself have changed majors.

Joe LaLeune (19:07.568)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (19:32.783)
You know, so a lot of people who think they're going to study one thing in college end up studying something completely different in the end. you know, knowing what you want to study is a great way of narrowing things down and finding the school that's best for that. But there's a lot of things that go into picking a school and you can't have, you can't figure that out unless you're actually having a conversation with your children. And yeah, it's hard to have conversations with 16, 17, 18 year old. I know very well.

Joe LaLeune (20:00.283)
Yeah. Three times three. yeah. And I think too, for a lot of, you know, 16 year olds who are just looking at the color of the Jersey, it is going to be, it's going to be such a hard conversation because they don't have, they may not even know what the right questions to ask her. That's probably a bit of a barrier for all parents in the situation too, is knowing even what, what are the right questions to ask? How can we narrow down, you know, where even just where to sort of point the ship?

Dennis Joyce (20:01.964)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (20:30.235)
to say.

Dennis Joyce (20:30.35)
Yeah, yeah. Especially when you start talking about, I mean, there are only, if you're on the boy side, like 68 or whatever schools in D1, it's actually pretty easy. But when you start talking about D3, there's hundreds of schools. So that's why I said, I always started off all the conversations like, where do you want to live? Like, what do you want? I have friends. This is the conversation they had. What do you want out of college? I want warm weather. OK.

Joe LaLeune (20:40.581)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (20:55.554)
Boom, you know what cold weather is, and you understand not wanting to be that anymore. So they just all of sudden, it was like, OK, we're going to draw a line across the states, and we're going to look at schools below. You just cut off. If you want to go below that line, you cut off probably 75 % of all the schools with the concentration in the Northeast. So again, it can be very.

Joe LaLeune (20:58.336)
Exactly.

Joe LaLeune (21:12.567)
Yeah. Yeah. Especially for lacrosse.

Dennis Joyce (21:17.302)
You can start the conversation off really easily with just big questions. What kind of weather do you want? You want to be in a city or urban setting or a rural setting? You can really kind of narrow this down pretty quickly. And then you can pile on the lacrosse on top and say, no, do you want to be competitive? Does winning a conference championship every year matter to you? Some kids want to win.

Joe LaLeune (21:36.985)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (21:46.118)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (21:46.279)
And that sounds silly because you think they're all competitors and they all want to win. But some kids want to play because they love playing. They love being with the boys and they like the whole being a lacrosse player. And there's nothing wrong with that. I tell people all the time, that's OK. And there's guys who are like, I want to win every game. If I don't win, I break everything in my room and I kick the dog.

Joe LaLeune (21:59.109)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (22:07.778)
And that's kind of OK also. But you have to understand that schools are different, especially when you start looking at the D3 and D2 levels. Some schools, they have lacrosse because it's fun to have lacrosse. And they're going to come fifth in their division every year, in their conference every year. So again, that's another way of kind of narrowing things down. And it's just like that's all it is. It's just kind of narrow, of chip away, chip away, chip away until we find what we want.

Joe LaLeune (22:18.468)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (22:30.448)
And those were two, the process needs to be so personalized because every kid is going to be different. And even as a parent, you think like my kid must want to go play over here until you start having those, the conversation with them. And then you find out like they just want warm weather and they're going to go down to Jackson or something like that. But, but especially when the cost of school is so expensive that if you are just kind of like shoving your, you know, a square peg in a round hole, cause you think that's the place to be.

Dennis Joyce (22:45.71)
Exactly.

Joe LaLeune (22:58.243)
And you not super competitive and you don't like the cold weather in Denver. you, you know, just want to the lacrosse is an add on to your, to your university experience. Those are all important things to figure out before you sign on the dotted line and start moving across the country. Cause your experience is tied to a cost as well.

Dennis Joyce (23:17.55)
The cost is the scariest part. I did a whole series on inexpensive places to play Division III lacrosse. And it was one of my most popular series because people were like, oh, I didn't realize those really good teams were inexpensive. They're all top 100 teams. I think it was 20 per men's and women's. And we just kind of broke it down and just said, you you could go and play lacrosse and do it and get a good education. Because that's still a thing. you don't, I I think the cost at Tufts is $19,000.

Joe LaLeune (23:22.455)
I saw that, I loved it. I love that.

Joe LaLeune (23:31.873)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (23:42.328)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (23:47.996)
$92,000 a year right now? And there's nothing wrong with Tufts. It's fantastic university, and they have a great lacrosse program. But there's no scholarships. They do have a lot of financial aid and grants and that kind of stuff to help make it doable. But there's a big difference between, say, SUNY Geneseo, State University of New York Geneseo, which was $20,000 a year.

Joe LaLeune (23:49.38)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (24:09.294)
and a Tufts or a Middlebury where it's $90,000 a year. obviously, La Crosse is different. The atmosphere is different. There's a lot of differences, but they both get a college degree at the end. And that has to be taken into effect because not everybody has that kind of cash to outlay.

Joe LaLeune (24:12.643)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (24:24.791)
Yeah, exactly. How much weight should academics carry versus the lacrosse opportunity?

Dennis Joyce (24:30.486)
In my opinion, again, this varies, there's some people who really want to play lacrosse at the highest level and they want to win a national championship. That's so important to them and they're willing to kind of take that. Now, lacrosse is really good because lacrosse, the top schools in lacrosse are all good universities. It's kind of different than a lot of other sports. But, you know, it's okay to...

Joe LaLeune (24:39.031)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (24:46.563)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (24:52.366)
really, really want to play at a high level, that's OK. But for the normal kid, for everybody else, would say academics has to be higher than the lacrosse, because you don't know what's going to happen. And God forbid we have injuries and that kind of stuff where you can't play anymore. The old thing is, would you stay here if you weren't playing lacrosse? And that's really got to be important. And if the academics aren't there, it becomes hollow after a while. If you're just doing this stuff and it's not going to get you anything at the end,

Joe LaLeune (25:10.275)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (25:21.838)
Why are you doing it? And I think that's why say academics are so important. there are so many good schools that play lacrosse that don't cost a lot of money that actually give you a good education. And you don't have to pay $95,000 a year. You can if you want. I don't.

Joe LaLeune (25:32.163)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (25:38.263)
That's a great question though. Like, would you stay here if you weren't here to also play lacrosse?

Dennis Joyce (25:43.491)
Yeah, I think that's the biggest question. And if you're really honest with yourself, a lot of kids, you find it with the D1 kids. Especially if you're going to a school that's very expensive. And let's say they give you some money.

Maybe they cut it in half for a scholar. It's a nice scholarship. Now you're going to a very prestigious university for $40,000, which is still a lot of money. But from a value perspective, you're getting a tremendous amount of value. And the coach is horrible. And your friends suck there and everything else. Or maybe your friends are great, but the lacrosse team is just driving you insane. And you don't want to do it anymore. Your body aches.

and you just wish it could end. But you know if you quit the team, you can't afford to go there anymore. That's another thing that people don't realize. They kind of own you, especially with the scholarships. If they give you money, they control your whole being. They really do control whether or not you, when you eat, when you sleep, when you travel, when you get off a plane, when you get on a plane, when you get to go get a Chipotle meal. They are under total control of that. yeah, it's a lot of things that go into that.

Joe LaLeune (26:25.505)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (26:35.019)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (26:42.465)
you

Joe LaLeune (26:48.936)
Yeah, you definitely become their commodity in a way. What are red flags that a school might look good on paper, but be a poor fit long term?

Dennis Joyce (27:01.326)
That's a good question. There's a lot of things. think, you know, I always say that the way a coach or a school is pursuing you in the recruiting process is the best they're ever going to be to you. The absolute best.

Joe LaLeune (27:17.858)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (27:20.47)
So they are going to be on their best behavior. They're going to be attentive. They're going to be overly nice. And if they're not doing that or they flitter in or out and they don't seem like they're giving you their all, you have to remember, this is going to be the best they're ever going to be. That's a red flag to me.

Joe LaLeune (27:27.234)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (27:38.87)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (27:40.687)
That's a really big flag because you really want them to be on their best behavior. And normally they're super, super nice. They might turn into complete jerks later, but at least they're going to lie to you upfront. That's how I, that's how I describe it to people. And you at least want that. And I see a lot of people who don't get that and they, the recruiting process is, is full of ghosting and popping back in and oh, by the way, or we, know, whatever it may be where it's not that process, you have to go where you are wanted.

Joe LaLeune (27:50.453)
No.

Joe LaLeune (28:10.87)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (28:11.022)
That's the number why I tell people all the time, just go where they want you. If there's two schools and you really want to go to one and one really wants you, go to the one that really wants you. Long term, you'll be happier than forcing yourself into a situation where coaches are kind of mixed on you. They'll take you because, you know, they can always use another midi or you're going to be one of our best players. We want you so badly.

Joe LaLeune (28:27.605)
Hmm. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (28:34.264)
Yeah, so I think that's the biggest thing. red flag is how are they treating you in the recurring process? They're going to be the best they've ever been.

Joe LaLeune (28:38.763)
Yeah, like half truths and half information or if you're like chasing them around to get feedback on things.

Dennis Joyce (28:48.494)
Yeah, my daughter had one program that she going through process. she goes, I want to this. One school was like, hey, let's get you on with the academic advisors. We'll set up a meeting. You can talk to them. They can answer any question you possibly have about this program. We want to make sure you're happy in it, because there's a lot of options we think might be better for you. But she'll go over that in the conversation. And another school was like, here's our website.

Joe LaLeune (29:18.027)
Yeah. Red flag. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (29:20.76)
Red flag. I mean, there's a big difference in how they're treating you. that's, again, they're on their best behavior. And that's how they treated you.

Joe LaLeune (29:28.415)
Yeah, but even if you got 50 % of example A there, you're still going to get a good experience of someone who's being supportive outside of how you're doing on the field. Yeah, I love that. How do current players factor into evaluating fit?

Dennis Joyce (29:38.443)
Exactly.

Dennis Joyce (29:46.929)
What do mean by that?

Joe LaLeune (29:48.139)
So if you're, you know, maybe you're watching a team, team play the current players who are on the team. And when you're evaluating whether it's a good fit for your child to go or for you to go, how much does it play into that evaluation?

Dennis Joyce (29:57.369)
I think.

Dennis Joyce (30:02.361)
I'll you the experience from my own life. went to my son is going to play in the Big East next year. And we went to a scrimmage this weekend. And yeah, I was watching all the players, kind of see how big they are, how fast they are, because you want to see if your kid can compete there. But I tell you what's better. Watch the coaches. This is a scrimmage. It's the week before season starts. They're focused. They want to be. Watch how they interact.

Joe LaLeune (30:16.417)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (30:31.438)
You know, how do they interact with each other? How do they interact with the other coach? How do they interact with the refs and how they interact with the players? The coach that my son's going to play for, he was joking around with his players. Guys would score a goal. He'd come over and high five him. He's, you know, praise and he's joking. And some guy made a huge mistake out in the field and it came off and he kind of gave him the, you know.

Joe LaLeune (30:47.616)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (30:55.15)
kind of jokingly kind of mocking the situation. yeah, so I think you should watch the coaches more than the players and how they interact with everyone around them, because that's how they're going to interact with your child in the process. But to your question, watching the players out there is really important because you can learn about how they run their system, how they utilize players. Do they tend to have the biggest guy on the field dodge from the top and kind of, you know,

Joe LaLeune (30:57.109)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (31:05.12)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (31:25.166)
run everything through one guy. Do they move the ball? Do they have a, you know, there's so many nuances to it and you know how your kid plays and how that's going to work and you can see if they fit. So I think that's a great way of kind of when you're narrowing things down, you know, watch the coaches, look at the other players, see where they're from, see where they're from. That's a big one. Oh, they only seem to recruit kids from Long Island and I love kids from Long Island, but kids from Long Island are special. Or, you know, they have all their kids are from the DMV area.

Joe LaLeune (31:43.253)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (31:54.957)
And you're not. You're from the West Coast. That makes a big difference. Are they all prep school kids? Are they not prep school? There's a lot of things like this. How they build their roster is important.

Joe LaLeune (32:02.816)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (32:07.348)
Yeah. Cause individually you may, you kind of want to go on with it, you know, something more ground than just the sport itself, you know, have some more commonalities, you know, maybe you played in a similar division for high school or something like that. But yeah, I could get that too. Like if you're the odd man out all the time, you know, it's going to be a little tougher to get in, in the mix with those guys.

Dennis Joyce (32:28.716)
Yeah, absolutely. So my daughter went to school and there's a...

She's a very nice school, good school, good people, a lot of prep school kids. They're all wonderful, but they have different experiences than my public school girl. And to your point, that is something you have to have common ground with the people you're going to be involved with. So again, is it a showstopper? No. But it's something you probably want to take a look at and understand where are they recruiting from? Who are they recruiting? What kind of schools do they get their kids from? It's important.

Joe LaLeune (32:41.514)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (33:00.499)
I would say to off off of the field, if you had the opportunity to talk to current players, like as a parent, it would be interesting to see sort of how the, the guys carry themselves, like how they speak, how they interact with other parents, because he can, I think he can probably tell quite a bit about how the program is being run based on the development of, the men's of men and the women of women, how they, know, confidence and.

Are they articulate? they polite? Are they supportive? Right. You can look for some of those things just if you get the opportunity to have conversations with some current players to.

Dennis Joyce (33:37.751)
You should almost insist.

on talking to players. In fact, most good coaches at good programs are going to put you in touch with players to have conversations because it's so important. When you go on for an official visit, they're going to have you go maybe spend a night in the dorms with the guys or hang out for an afternoon. And they're really testing you to see if you're going to fit in that group because you don't want to be the odd man there. And the feedback they get from the players about you as a player does factor into it.

seen many cases where the players that come back to the coach and said,

Yeah, this one's an odd duck. I don't know. And that factors. But I think that the good coaches are going to put the player with the other players and the parents with them. We had one at Colgate. I really like the coaching staff at Colgate. And they put us in a room with some of the players. were a couple freshmen, a couple sophomores, a senior, maybe a junior also, like six guys. And they were like, ask us anything.

Joe LaLeune (34:15.977)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (34:41.32)
Hmm. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (34:42.038)
And we did. We peppered those kids with questions. And they were, to your point, articulate. They could express what was going on. They all loved being at the school. Now they were all hand-picked. I'm sure the disgruntled one wasn't there. they all were, you want them, say, I would love my kid to be like one of these kids when you were alive. So good coaches and good recruitment process are going to insist that you are talking to players. And as a parent, I would want to talk to them. And the schools that allowed us to do that,

Joe LaLeune (34:53.288)
Sure.

Dennis Joyce (35:11.648)
It made the big difference.

Joe LaLeune (35:13.15)
Yeah. And especially too, for like, you know, a young 17 year old or 18 year old is about to go off to school to be able to talk to, you know, the captains of the team, these guys who they're going to look up to and really get the inside scoop on even how the, the captains like to run the team related things. Like what happens in the lifting room and what happens with like team events and you know, what are we involved with in the community and just going kind of deep with those guys because they're going to

Usually anyway, they'll be coached a little bit maybe but they'll usually give you some honest answers on that stuff.

Dennis Joyce (35:45.849)
We met a bunch of coaches with my youngest son where we were having the same conversation. the coaches, we were so lucky in my son's recruiting. We went on too many visits. It a good problem to have. But we went on a ton of visits and we met some fantastic coaches.

Joe LaLeune (35:58.3)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (36:03.766)
really good men who you would have no issue giving your child over to. And when every one of them had us talk to one of the players, we asked them, is that guy that we just talked to the same guy you see on a day-to-day basis? And they were all like, it's exactly the same guy.

Joe LaLeune (36:08.369)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (36:17.981)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (36:21.768)
And that's the key, because like I said, some guys are really good at turning the charm on. And they're a little different when the season starts. But that's what you're trying to find out. Is the guy who's recruiting me going to be the guy who's going to coach me later on? And talking to the players is it.

Joe LaLeune (36:37.084)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, one thing that's maybe like a little bit of an insight into that is with social media now, like you do get to see some behind the scenes of, mean, obviously they're still gonna handpick the best clips of them coaching and stuff like that, you know, their best pregame speech, but you do get to see a little bit of an insight in terms of how they communicate or how they maybe run a practice and as much as, you know, you're as a recruitee.

are sending videos to them, it's probably also a good idea to be trying to find as much video content on what those coaches and what those players are doing around the sport and within practice, because you can see the games usually depending on the level.

Dennis Joyce (37:18.03)
Yeah, the only thing I do, I do warn parents, because I've had some parents read out to me. There are a couple services out there that have like, your coach. There's a lot of those things out there. There's a couple different ones. And we're college athletes, supposedly college athletes. I think there's a lot of college parents who actually throw these forms out. And they can tell you what they like and dislike about a player. And my philosophy on that always is the people who will fill out one of those forms are not the happy people.

Joe LaLeune (37:25.565)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (37:33.657)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (37:42.863)
Yeah, yeah, it's like who writes Yelp reviews?

Dennis Joyce (37:43.534)
So it's very skewed. Yeah, so it's one of those things where, yes, you should definitely look at social media, but kind of look through it through a lens of, it's probably not this good, and it's probably not that bad.

Joe LaLeune (37:52.253)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (37:56.325)
Yeah, somewhere in the middle. How much does coaching philosophy and staff alignment matter in recruiting and what signs suggest a player and staff may not be a good match?

Dennis Joyce (38:07.566)
Oh, this is such an important one. There were a number of teams. We were pretty lucky in the people who recruited my son, my youngest son. I kind of forgot half the stuff about my oldest son recruiting process, but my youngest one's still fresh in the memory. He's a very particular player, very type of player. He's going to fit in systems that are going work really well for him. The systems are just not going work for him.

Joe LaLeune (38:19.879)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (38:28.882)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (38:29.478)
And he got recruited by coaches that mostly ran the systems that would work for him. But there were a couple that weren't. And when we were talking to them and we were having conversations, we were asking questions like, how do you see him fitting in your system? Or what do you think is his best trait that's going to fit here? And you get some answers, and you're like, that's not my kid.

Joe LaLeune (38:50.576)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (38:57.435)
I think you got to mix it up with somebody else. Not 31.

Joe LaLeune (38:59.235)
He was wearing 13 in the showcase, not 31.

Dennis Joyce (39:03.17)
So as a general rule, fit as far as system is so important. knowing what kind of system they run, my son's going to fit very well in a very fast moving, quick passing. He's not going to work really well in a system where it's like, get the biggest guy of the ball, clear out, and dodge. That's not his game. And when you start talking to coaches and you start talking about having to talk about their systems, it becomes pretty

Joe LaLeune (39:25.277)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (39:33.104)
apparent what's going to work from what's not going to work. And again, even if the uniforms are really pretty and they have the right colors for your eyes, if you're in the wrong system, you're going to be watching with a stick in your hand from the sidelines more than you'd on the field.

Joe LaLeune (39:40.637)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (39:46.875)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, even my experience, you know, played with guys who were great, you know, coming out of the programs that they're in. And then the system that we ran, you know, they kind of molded a little bit to it, but it was always, you know, it's kind of trying to, trying to force a style of play that probably didn't work best for them.

Dennis Joyce (40:04.846)
Yeah, I have another quick story on that. I have a very highly ranked player in the 2000s.

class. He was top 25. He committed to a Big Ten school. He was absolutely locked in, as excited as could be, great coach. And he went and got coached by him at an event. First time, know, they were getting recruited when they were very young at that point. So he committed when he was in ninth grade, I think. And he went and got coached at this event. And he got done. And he walked to his dad and said, I can't play for this guy. I can't play. And his dad's like, what?

He's like, he wants me to run a play exactly the way he wrote it up. I need to take five steps to the right. I need to throw it to the outlet. Then I got to make three steps to the left. And then I'm going to, he goes, I can't do that.

Joe LaLeune (40:46.768)
Yeah, three steps.

Joe LaLeune (40:55.76)
Nah.

Dennis Joyce (40:56.416)
And that, you know, he's like, I'll never play here because I cannot do that kind of rote running of plays. And he was smart enough to realize it and they decommitted and committed to another school. But that's perfect example of like, he realized at least early in the fact that that system was not going to be good for him. And the way the coach expected it was not going to work.

Joe LaLeune (41:07.9)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (41:15.898)
Yeah. I'm kind of lucky to get an opportunity to, run with him because, know, you don't really want to figure that out on first day on campus. Like, oops, I made a mistake here. how often do families underestimate coaching turnover?

Dennis Joyce (41:22.371)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (41:26.552)
That would be a big ups, right? Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (41:33.099)
I tell people all that I parents tell me all the time. their assistant coach, their defensive coordinator is the best coach in the world. I go, don't don't fall in love with him. Don't fall in love with him unless he's 45 or 50 years old and looks very comfortable in the chair that he's sitting in. If he's a young guy and he's dynamic and he's excited to have his job, just don't fall in love with him because he won't be there.

Joe LaLeune (41:52.943)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (42:02.466)
There was one particular coach that we loved, assistant coach. His dad's a famous coach also. And I loved his system. It was my younger son. Loved his system, loved him. I'm like, this guy. You could play for this guy. This guy's good. And we ended up not choosing that school. We chose another school. And literally the day we committed to the new school, that guy left.

He left and went to another school. So it's like, don't, I only broke my own rules. Don't fall in love with assistant coaches because they are transient at best.

Joe LaLeune (42:28.099)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (42:35.353)
Yeah, especially like the coordinators and stuff too. You to remember it's like it's their career as well. If they're really trying to make it as a coach and they kind of live out of out of a suitcase, right? Like looking for the next level up of a job, you know, just as

Dennis Joyce (42:48.396)
Yeah, I tell him, unless the guy has lots of gray hair and his seat and his chair is like really worn in, then he ain't going anywhere. He's got a couple of kids and he's working for a living. But yeah, if you really like an assistant coach, chances are someone else is going to like them and they're going to offer him a job.

Joe LaLeune (42:53.189)
warning.

Joe LaLeune (43:05.231)
Yeah, right. Exactly. And work his way up the ladder a little bit. What questions should players be asking coaches that they usually don't?

Dennis Joyce (43:14.734)
I don't think people ask hard questions. They don't ask questions that they're afraid to ask questions that would make them look bad, but they want the answer. there is no, first off, there is no right question. is, even though the people on the IG and TikTok will tell you, there's here's the question you asked to guarantee yourself a scholarship. There are no questions like that. There really aren't. But you should ask questions that you want the answers to. If you ask questions that you want the answers to,

Joe LaLeune (43:21.594)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (43:34.719)
Mm-hmm. No.

Dennis Joyce (43:43.511)
then you're going to get answers and be able to make better decisions. So I always tell people, said, ask them if everyone travels.

Joe LaLeune (43:47.267)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (43:53.09)
Yeah, I like this point.

Dennis Joyce (43:54.159)
That's my big one. It's like, because there's nothing worse than finding out you're on campus, you're wearing the uniform, you're practicing all those hours, all the lifts and all the conditioning. And then it's like big game day and you're watching on ESPN like the rest of us. And that's rough. you know, and, you know, understand you're a freshman, you're probably not going to play anyway, especially at a good program. But, you know, kind of get and go in the airport and travel or on the bus with all the guys. That's kind of the thing. And now with the roster limits and though people

Joe LaLeune (44:08.13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (44:20.399)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (44:23.952)
talk about the NCAA settlement as if it's a boon. It's not a boon for lacrosse in most places. They are tightening the budgets because you saw Rutgers lose $75 million this year. They're squeezing, and they're going to squeeze from other programs. So if you can take 32 or 35 on a road trip and leave 10 at home, that's a significant savings. I tell people, but in the general rule, ask questions if you want answers to, especially questions that are about me.

Joe LaLeune (44:28.986)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (44:34.575)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (44:54.272)
How am I going to fit in your system? Where do you see me contributing? What do you think my role is going to be as a freshman? When I'm a senior, what do you perceive me having? mean, some of them are hard questions to answer because no one really knows what the heck you're going to do when you get on campus. the coach should be able to give you answers. But as a general rule, ask questions you want the answers to, and you'll never have a problem.

Joe LaLeune (45:01.101)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (45:16.537)
I think it goes back to as well, like talking to the schools that want you there as well. And they're, they're going to be more receptive to answering your questions. Like it'd be pretty hard. It'd be a pretty poor question to really rub a coach the wrong way where they're like, nevermind, you put next to that guy's name. I think they're going to be as long as they're receptive to wanting you to come there, they're going to be receptive to answering your questions.

Dennis Joyce (45:38.999)
I think that's a good, listen, if they react in a negative way, it's a pretty good sign also, or maybe a bad sign, but at least you'll know the answer.

Joe LaLeune (45:44.569)
Flag flag up. How can players tell if they're being recruited as depth versus development?

Dennis Joyce (45:55.627)
It probably has a lot to do with timing. When they're recruiting you. Also, the nice thing about it right now is that you can look at a school and see who they've committed. My son had one experience where he was being raised as lefty attackman and a school was reaching out to us.

Joe LaLeune (46:08.749)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (46:19.278)
don't know, top 10 school, reached out to him and said, oh, we want you. And they were going through the whole process, the whole feeling out process. And we set up a visit. And the day before the visit, they committed another left-handed attack on him. And he was like, eh, OK. That's cool. mean, there's a lot of schools, so it's not a big deal. So they still wanted him to come, but they already had picked somebody else up. So he was going to be dept for them.

Joe LaLeune (46:32.993)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (46:37.996)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (46:45.932)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (46:46.358)
And so under, that's the nice thing about right today versus say 10 or 15 years ago, you pretty much know who they have committed inside of the cross is a great job of tracking almost every commit. It's at the end level. So you can understand who they've committed, what positions they have filled, and you can kind of figure it out. can ask coaches, they're going to lie to you.

Joe LaLeune (46:57.048)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (47:07.117)
They're going to always try to make themselves look good. You're never going to be the guy who's a really good practice player. You're always going to be a potential starter. But yeah, mean, think you have to do a lot of homework.

Joe LaLeune (47:17.718)
Yeah. Yeah. With Southern sports, sometimes it's maybe more obvious because like, you know, you take football as an example and like the school you want to go, they've got a second year quarterback who's really good and he's all state and whatever, and you're a quarterback, you you you're going to wait a couple of years for that guy to graduate before you see the field in lacrosse. Maybe it's not quite as obvious because there's like multiple players for each position potentially, or, you know, if there is good depth on the team.

Dennis Joyce (47:32.692)
yeah.

Dennis Joyce (47:38.087)
so yeah, I'm sorry. I misread the question. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (47:46.382)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (47:46.722)
but yeah, I think it's a good point, like doing the research of who's on the roster, where are they in their college journey and how, how would you fit into that program? And then obviously it comes down to questions to the coaches of, of where you fit.

Dennis Joyce (48:00.591)
100%. If you understand, I kind of answered the question from a recruiting perspective, as far as a single class.

But you're right. If you're a left-handed lefty and they have two lefties at each class ahead of you, yeah, there's going to be a lot of competition for that spot. they the guy who was an All-American for the last two years, OK, well, you know you're going to wait for him, especially in positions where you can't get on the field otherwise. If you're a face-off guy, you're a goalie, you're an LSM, where there really is only one, then you really have to be extremely aware of who

Joe LaLeune (48:07.286)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (48:19.243)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (48:28.171)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (48:32.565)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (48:37.258)
is on the roster, especially goalies. Goalies are the hardest one because you can only have one goalie and they don't change goalies very, very often and sometimes you're gonna sit on the bench for two or three years, at least.

Joe LaLeune (48:52.629)
Yeah, basically, as long as they're saving the ball and they're healthy, they're going to be in the net, you know, in a whatever 14 game season, the backup goalie might get two to three games out of that, you know, it's betting on health and performance and probably comes down a little bit to to the player themselves and how competitive they are to develop.

Dennis Joyce (49:16.078)
Yeah, so that goes back to your earlier question where we talked about what do you want out of a plane? Some kids have to play. I just want to be on the field. The worst thing you do to some of these kids is tell them to sit on the sidelines. Most of these kids have never not been picked first on anything. And now you're like, yeah, you can go to UNC, and you'll probably get on the field as a senior, maybe a junior if you're lucky. And then they're like,

Joe LaLeune (49:24.652)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (49:33.704)
Right.

Dennis Joyce (49:44.363)
I get it. It's cool. I might win a national championship. That's awesome. But I don't want to watch other people play for two years. And other kids are like, heck no. I want to be on the best team competing in practice. My role is to make every one of those team better. Every practice is my Super Bowl. You know, that's a different type of mentality. And some kids just don't have that. They're like, I'd rather go to the 30th ranked team in the country and play there, knowing that I'll never win a national championship. I might never meet the NCAAs in four years, but I'll play.

Joe LaLeune (49:51.871)
No, that would kill me.

Joe LaLeune (50:01.335)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (50:09.164)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (50:13.567)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, comes down to your choices. What role does honesty from coaches actually play in the process? Because we know we're getting the best of them on the spot, but how much of it plays into it?

Dennis Joyce (50:22.69)
Yeah, and we...

Dennis Joyce (50:29.08)
I think that's where you have to do your homework. talk to the players who are there. Talk to the players who maybe, if you have a good network and you could find players who didn't choose them.

Joe LaLeune (50:40.14)
Mmm.

Dennis Joyce (50:40.398)
you can talk to them. That's also a big thing. I demand honesty. All my kids play the same way, which is like, just tell them what we're doing wrong, we'll fix it. And if someone's going to lie to you in the recruiting process or not be truthful or bend the situation a little bit, that's a real bad sign. You really just want someone to say, want you to, hey, look, I think you can be a contributor on this team. They'll use code words if you're not going to be a starter at day one. But I think that honesty from a

Joe LaLeune (50:50.967)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (51:08.267)
No.

Dennis Joyce (51:10.352)
coach is almost paramount. That's something I demand from all the people we deal with. It's just like, be honest with the players. They can handle it. They're not eggs. They don't crack. You can be honest with them, tell them things that they're not going to like, and everything will be OK. But if you have a coach who's going to be pussyfooting around things and not being honest, it's a bad environment. And it ends up being a lot of tension, anxiety, and everything else associated with it. And look, this is stressful enough as it is.

Joe LaLeune (51:17.238)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (51:40.453)
as a college athlete, you don't need the coach adding to it.

Joe LaLeune (51:41.905)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of debate around showcases and camps and when do these help and when do they actually hurt a player's recruiting story?

Dennis Joyce (51:54.895)
what a good question. Let's give you an A for this question. OK. I think so much money is wasted on showcases.

Joe LaLeune (51:59.657)
Thank you. Thank you.

Dennis Joyce (52:06.862)
And where I say this, it goes back to my original point about you have to know where you fit in the whole cycle of everything. Where are you? Because I see kids who are solid Division III kids, great Division III kids, who are going to have a great career, maybe all Americans. And they're going to events that have no Division III coaches there. They're at events where even if they play at their absolute best,

they're not going to get recruited because they're missing that thing that the Division I coaches want. So that's the problem I have with the showcases is I think that you need to be at the place where people who can recruit you are going to be. That has to mean some self-awareness as to what I can do, where I can play.

Joe LaLeune (52:54.76)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (53:02.112)
And I think that's the mismatch that most parents fail to kind of recognize. If you can.

If you can identify your skill level and where you should play and go to those events, it's great. You can't say, Johnny is going to go to main stage or show time or 1 % and play really well and get recruited. It doesn't work that way. You have to be at that level to be able to showcase there. have to be seen and play well. And I think that's the biggest problem I have with showcase. People get frustrated with them or at the wrong ones. Not that the showcases themselves are bad.

Joe LaLeune (53:24.649)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (53:40.671)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (53:43.053)
It's just a way to get noticed. But if you're being noticed by people who you can't play for, it doesn't have any value. So I think that's what people, you people say, it's a cash grab. It's a waste of time. Yes. Yes. If you're at the wrong one, it is all of those things. And again, it comes down to going to the best, whether it be a tournament. Like, if you're going to go to Nap Town,

Joe LaLeune (53:56.405)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (54:09.774)
and you're going to play, and you're going to go there where you're a single A, lacrosse team that's half, it's OK. They're pretty good in Kentucky. They're pretty good. But you're going go there, and you're going to get creamed. There's no value there. And same thing applies for showcases and everything else. You have to go to the right ones. And the nice thing is there are.

Joe LaLeune (54:21.015)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (54:27.822)
Showcases that are focused on Division III, or high academic, or Division II focused, or where you can really kind of go play in front of people who might actually recruit you. I'm not saying people should knock down their dreams and not strive to be, but there's also a little bit of reality that has to seep in eventually. Otherwise, you're just throwing money away.

Joe LaLeune (54:31.839)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (54:47.902)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (54:50.53)
you know, just throwing it away. And that's why I think a lot of the frustration comes from that. You're at the wrong event. There's nothing wrong with showcases, right? general. Probably wrong with being at the wrong one.

Joe LaLeune (55:00.434)
Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. you're, yeah, that's, that's the time waste. It's like, looking for pizza at a burger joint.

Dennis Joyce (55:09.064)
ordering seafood at a steakhouse.

Joe LaLeune (55:11.252)
Not going to get what you're looking for. If there was like an order of operation for players to figure out where they stand, what do you think that would be like? If do they go to a showcase and realize like, whoops, this is not I'm not at this level, or do they go to a combine or what would it kind of be if there was an order of operation to kind of narrow down where you stand in the spectrum of all these players in your in your age group?

Because the best guys get blue chipped and they get those stars and people kind of know where they stand, but how does everyone else figure it out?

Dennis Joyce (55:38.061)
I think.

Dennis Joyce (55:48.172)
Yeah, that's a great question. Something we've been kind of talking about on the Instagram and TikTok channel is the fact that

Dennis Joyce (55:59.501)
do you figure out where you are? Like, how do you judge? And I've said that you should start off with simply talking to your coach. That's where you've got to start. And I've found, and this is very foreign to me, because I've

Joe LaLeune (56:02.932)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (56:15.79)
My local high school, we've had like two coaches in the last 50 years. So there's a lot of trust. Everyone knows our coaches. They're reliable. They know what they're doing. And I know that that may be an anomaly, because the sport is growing faster than our ability to coach it. So a lot of people don't feel comfortable talking to their coaches. They feel that their coaches don't really understand what it means to play at the next level. But I do think that.

Joe LaLeune (56:35.731)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (56:42.994)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (56:44.14)
going to somebody who is not being paid by you is a big thing. Just go and so your club coach should be able to tell you how you're doing, like what level you're at. But they also have a financial, you know,

problem with that because if they tell you you're not progressing, you're not really doing well, then you might change clubs and take your money somewhere else. So they're probably going to say things like, Hey, you're doing really well. You're almost there. Hey, we're going to have a couple sessions on Saturday, the $235 an hour. And I think that will push you right over the edge and you'll be a great player. I think you need to find someone who you're not paying. But I also tell people that, you know, if you can go like prospect days are really rough.

Joe LaLeune (57:02.173)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (57:09.299)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (57:20.563)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (57:30.138)
Prosperity is I'm not really a huge fan of them because there's a lot of things go into Prosperity is that.

aren't as fair as you'd hope them to be. But I do think using Prospect Days as a way of kind of seeing where you fall is a great way. And I say always go to it. Like I'm lucky there's a number of schools in our general area here where you can go for $50, $100, $150 for a day, get coached by a Division III coach or Division II coach or if you want to go an hour away you can go three Division I schools, and you can go and test yourself. You may not want to go to that school, but the kids who are going there are at a certain level. Are you able to play

Joe LaLeune (57:42.803)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (58:06.384)
and be seen and get noticed and get, you know, look really good against a Division III, Division II, Division I. It's a great way of kind of knowing where you stand.

Joe LaLeune (58:16.23)
Yeah, that's a great idea. And then too, if you get the chance to talk to that coach and really say to him, you know, what are the holes in my game? Where do you see me matching up against other players that you've seen? You know, am I a bottom 10 or am I a top 10 guy? And really just having a better understanding of where you stand, maybe tough with a 16 year old to be self aware enough to be like, you know, to get poked, you know, and see where you do have holes in your game that you can work on, but a self aware.

16 year old might say, okay, right time to buckle down and fix those things and get better.

Dennis Joyce (58:50.21)
Right, and you can also leverage your high school coach. I'm a huge fan of school coaches. think they're getting a bad rap. people, I always joke that it's like the third rail for me. If I mention anything about high school coaches, everyone loses their minds. But.

High school coaches are respected by college coaches. They know they're putting in lot of long hours. So if your high school coach reaches out, if you go to a prospect day, this is my usual tell people to do. You go to a prospect day, you go to your high school coach, say, hey, coach, I'm going to go to so and so's camp on Saturday. Can you reach out to them telling them coming?

And almost every coach will say, no problem. I'll reach out, and they'll email or text and say, hey, I got a player coming. He's a really good left-handed attackman. I think you'd really like him. You keep an eye on him. I might follow up on next week and find out. And then they follow up next week, and they can get really good feedback because coaches don't mind talking to other coaches. They sometimes get squirrely when they're talking to a player, especially there's some rules that's put about talking to players. And they don't want to talk to parents. Parents can't talk to them either.

Joe LaLeune (59:45.203)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (59:51.346)
Yes.

Joe LaLeune (59:54.939)
Nah.

Dennis Joyce (59:54.977)
But a high school coach can have a really good conversation and get some really, really good feedback from a college coach on a player. And they'll say things like, hey, he's not athletic enough. He's not explosive enough. I don't think he's going to be able to play here, but he probably could play at this level. And that's how you have to build it. again, you're going to get a lot of comments or a lot of.

you might get feedback you don't like. And people are scared of that. And it's better to do that than chase, throw your money down the drain, go into events that you have no business being at.

Joe LaLeune (01:00:17.202)
Correct.

Joe LaLeune (01:00:25.532)
Yeah, that's great advice because the high school coach can kind of act like an intermediary, is that fair to say? And I think that coach to coach conversation, they're going to just give each other the straight dope on what's really happening. There's no incentive for a college coach to push foot around and give false information for a player who's just going to get coached by somebody else. They're just going to give them the straight information.

Dennis Joyce (01:00:31.692)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dennis Joyce (01:00:52.974)
Yeah, it's going to be short and sweet and that kind of stuff. And club directors can certainly do that if you really don't like, know, if you're, like I said, some people really do not like their high school coaches. This is the weirdest thing for me. It's completely opposite of my life. But, you know, your club coach can certainly do that. everyone has this kind of like, oh, boy, it's the club director's calling. He's going to sell me on a player. High school coaches aren't selling. They don't care. You know, they're just trying to help out their kids. that's why I'm always a fan of saying, OK, here you go.

Joe LaLeune (01:01:13.362)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:01:17.18)
Yeah, yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:01:22.928)
The high school coach has no financial stake in the kid. He wants the kid to succeed because the kid's a good kid, comes from a good family, is good to the community, and college coaches respect that.

Joe LaLeune (01:01:38.318)
And ultimately he's going to graduate out of high school, hopefully. So you're not, you're not going to have them sticking around for longer as a player. you might as well get them off in the right direction. do you see just circling back to the, showcases and stuff? Do you see differences in how players behave at showcases versus real games?

Dennis Joyce (01:01:41.986)
We hope.

Dennis Joyce (01:01:48.811)
Absolutely.

Dennis Joyce (01:02:00.771)
They have to. They have to. This is the thing that annoys people the most is the whole notion of, well, the ball hogs are, and I hate it because I'm like a purist on the lacrosse. I love a good look, extra pass guy, right? Move the ball, one more. But that's not how you get recruited.

Joe LaLeune (01:02:21.104)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:02:27.278)
Right. You have to get yours in a reasonable fashion and you have to show coaches that you can create on your own. And if you're say a passer that you can draw a slide to make that pass, you can manipulate the defense and as a result, yeah, you have to have the ball on your stick. So yes, people do play differently.

Joe LaLeune (01:02:31.578)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:02:43.244)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:02:50.926)
And it frustrates the bejeebus out of people. You'll hear people, my god, it was horrible. It hero ball. Hero ball is the usual answer. It's hero ball. And yes, it is. Now, people sometimes take it to the.

Joe LaLeune (01:02:54.209)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Dennis Joyce (01:03:05.708)
to nth degree and it does hurt a player. You don't want to be the ball hog, but there's a certain amount you better, you better show coaches that when you get the ball, you can make something happen either making the defense move, making the pass or creating your own shot, getting your hands free. Yeah. People are going to play differently and that's the nature of showcase. You're not there to win games. You're there to be noticed.

Joe LaLeune (01:03:25.68)
Yeah, I remember going to like some of my first ones for showcases and we weren't really like pre coached on that. So we kind of went just, you know, there's a bunch of us who went, so we kind of went to play a bit of like a team game. We want it. We wanted to go win games. And then we were watching these other teams were like, well, that face off guy just keeps winning the ball and they're just blasting straight at the net. Never passed, never looked to as another guy, you know,

Dennis Joyce (01:03:53.058)
Never gonna give that ball up.

Joe LaLeune (01:03:54.16)
Never going to give the ball up. And then, know, we watched this other guy over here. Wow. That guy, 80 % of the game had the ball on his stick and just never gave it up. But I mean, they made stuff happen, but what do you think that there are probably, I mean, it would be hard to narrow this down, but there are probably coaches and recruiters who are looking more in depth than just the guy who's got the ball on his stick all the time. Like they're looking for those intangible skills. They're looking for, you know, space creating and, know, drawing slides and stuff like that.

Dennis Joyce (01:04:21.858)
Well, drawing slides, absolutely. the way it works, people could, we had a whole series on this. I did a bunch of videos, I literally just talked about this. So yes, coaches love intangibles, and they'll tell you until they're blue in the face how they really want the extra pass, and they want smart players, and high lacrosse IQs, and all those things that make a really good lacrosse player. They want all those things. But they want athletes first.

Joe LaLeune (01:04:28.875)
Hehehe.

Joe LaLeune (01:04:48.825)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:04:49.42)
Right, so there's a, you have to be this tall to get on this ride. Right, and you, not necessarily heightens, but you have to be a certain athletic ability. You have to be able to have enough speed to get your hands free. You have to be big enough to absorb, not necessarily huge, but you have to be big enough to absorb the punishment. You have to be, right, so there's a baseline that.

Joe LaLeune (01:04:54.467)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:04:59.607)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:05:13.433)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:05:13.972)
Until you reach that baseline, and that's going to vary from coach to coach, division to division. Once you reach that baseline, then all the intangibles come into play. Then when you start comparing all the kids who are above that line, that's when you start looking at, what's his lacrosse IQ? How does he move the ball? What kind of teammate is he? Is he making people better? All those things really then differentiate you.

But you can't just be a really good teammate, a really good whatever, unless you are at the minimum level of athleticism for that particular coach. Because they want the kid to be able to make an impact on the field. And if you just are not fast enough to get separation, or you're not big enough to stop someone on defense, it doesn't matter. So yeah, I always say you have to be this tall to ride this ride.

Joe LaLeune (01:06:04.488)
Mm-hmm It's kind of like in moneyball, what do they say like does he pass the visual test You know and they're looking at guys first to see you know Does he have the stature does he have the size or does she have the size built and then how do they move on? The field like they're you know What's obvious basically to them first and then there's another layer sort of beyond that of the IQ and the skill and everything

Dennis Joyce (01:06:28.62)
Yeah, absolutely. The size is easy. If you walk on the field and one kid's 6'3", and one kid's 5'10", your eyes, no matter who you are, are going to gravitate towards the bigger kid. So they are automatically going to get noticed first. Just the nature of how we judge things in our vision. But it's going to be a lot more on that speed, quickness, explosiveness.

Joe LaLeune (01:06:39.427)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:06:46.658)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:06:57.102)
Creating space and then you know Mike you'll hear kids, but my my kids are great passer He makes lots of assists you can make ten assists in a game and do nothing to earn them Right. You can pass to an open guy

Joe LaLeune (01:06:58.648)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:07:03.138)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:07:09.23)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:07:13.526)
and he scores, you get an assist that is completely worthless from a recruiting perspective. Now you make a hard dodge, you force the slide to come to you, and then you kick it to the guy who became open because you manipulated the defense. That's valuable.

Joe LaLeune (01:07:17.39)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:07:30.094)
That's valuable. And parents don't understand that. they don't know how to value. Stats are horrible. There's no differentiation or good assist or good goal. With goalies, most of the shots that go in, have the, could you have made the save? No. No, you weren't going make No one's going to make that save. But there's some you should have. You have to make all the ones you can and maybe steal one or two that you shouldn't have gotten.

Joe LaLeune (01:07:30.126)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:08:00.555)
Yeah, that's the big thing. But I think athleticism is really the key. Not necessarily size, because you can have small players. we have tons of small players who have been extremely good. But you don't have small, slow players.

Joe LaLeune (01:08:14.763)
Yeah, right. Exactly. They have to be, they have to.

Dennis Joyce (01:08:17.218)
You have to be exceptional at something.

Joe LaLeune (01:08:19.959)
I think the first time I heard this and it was in like the Kyle Harrison, Hopkins era was Dave Petromole saying he, he, think he said, I'd rather take an athlete than a, than a skilled player because I can, I can teach him the skill. And, know, he took someone like Kyle Harrison that was extremely athletic, you know, great in multiple sports and basically just sort of gave them the opportunities to develop as a good lacrosse player while being an athlete. And I think that was for me, it stood out a lot to, to say.

a coach at that level, at that school say, you know, it's not always all about the best lacrosse player skill wise. I would rather take an athlete and just develop them to be a good lacrosse player. And Kyle Harrison's obviously one of the top examples of that, you know, guy flourished that that school and beyond.

Dennis Joyce (01:09:07.564)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100 % with that statement. But that's the thing that frustrates parents because they hear the coaches say lacrosse IQ and all those intangibles, but they have to realize you gotta be at this level, whatever that and that varies a lot between levels and coaching.

Joe LaLeune (01:09:24.813)
And I was just thinking about this too, is like the age of when you're going to these showcases too. Like if you're an eighth grader, and you, one guy's hit puberty before the other one girl's hit puberty before the other. And you've got these two players standing next to each other and one is over six feet. And the other one is, just not been blessed with early eighth grade puberty yet.

they may eventually become the same height. They may have this, you know, similar skill level, but in terms of visual, like being visible to these coaches and stuff, like we said, the visibility test, the tall guy is gonna get the eye on him first.

Dennis Joyce (01:10:06.166)
Yeah, there was one coach when they were doing the recruiting embryos, he joked that he goes, I try to recruit the Irish and the Scottish kids when they're 16 or 17, because they finally have grown. He goes, there is a lot of that. And that's one of the reasons why the coaches were pushing for pushing back the recruiting timeline, because it allows some catching up. they're.

Joe LaLeune (01:10:21.632)
Ha

Dennis Joyce (01:10:33.422)
I think we're going to go and talk about reclassing eventually here. But that is a big deal where physical ability, being a little bit older, a little bit stronger, everything else, it makes a big difference. And that's why going to these show, when you go to these showcases and you're playing as an eighth or ninth grader.

Joe LaLeune (01:10:36.449)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:10:53.528)
Coaches are like, kids could. OK, they're going to write that down and put it in my notebook for three years from now. Is that how it works? So they don't know what you're going to be. You might stop growing. You might choose to play baseball or maybe become a great football player. How many lacrosse players who are really, really good are playing football right now?

Joe LaLeune (01:10:55.691)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:11:08.588)
Mm-hmm.

Especially these days, especially with Bill Belichick looking for lacrosse on the lacrosse field.

Dennis Joyce (01:11:16.35)
goodness. Bill's taking everybody.

Joe LaLeune (01:11:20.012)
Let's shift gears just to outreach and communication. So for families navigating emails, letters and interest in outreach, how should they interpret interest or silence without overreacting?

Dennis Joyce (01:11:35.471)
over, they all overreact. Everyone overreact. I overreact. You get a note from Bresche from UNC, I don't care if it's a form letter. Oh, Bresche's sent me a note. You can't help it, right? It's great. So yeah, you have to understand that there are some things, there's a lot of emails being sent out from college coaches that are being sent to hundreds of people at a time.

Joe LaLeune (01:11:38.251)
That's exciting.

Joe LaLeune (01:11:42.857)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Hey, you get excited.

Dennis Joyce (01:12:04.544)
mass mailings and.

They might be emailing you because they got the distribution list from a tournament that you were at. You may have signed up on their questionnaire. So they'll be sending you emails. And they're really, really good at making mass mailings look like personalized emails. So you have to do some sleuthing when you get these emails to find out, are they telling they want me or my son or my daughter to come to this prospect date because they like it?

or they just saying kid name this come to my event and it's tough I have parents who send me emails and they say can you can you read this email I think they talk about my kid and I look at it and I'm like wow that's a good one I got some mass mailing and they're like really I'm like yeah you know if the coach puts their if the coach puts their cell phone number

Joe LaLeune (01:12:43.243)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:13:02.086)
It's a great thing. If they refer to the tournament where they saw you and something you did or a team that you played, a specific event, I saw you playing against Madlax and I love the way you handled the pressure they were putting on you in the second half there because they were really going at you and you just went through them. They're going to make it personally because they're trying to woo you. If it's generic, hey, you've been having a great season. You've been working really hard.

Joe LaLeune (01:13:21.237)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:13:31.094)
you know, that's a lot different. again, and it's wishful thinking, because every parent I know who has gotten an email hopes that it's real, right? You want Freshies Note to be real, right? You want, you know, pick your Ivy League school to really want you to come. The truth is, Prospect Days and things like that are at the basis of a fundraiser for the schools, for the programs. They make a lot of money off

Joe LaLeune (01:13:33.342)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:14:00.087)
all these kids coming. They do recruit out of them, absolutely. They're going to bring in kids they want to see. And those kids they're really looking at. And if someone does go there and blows their socks off, they're certainly going to notice. But they're focused on their 10 or 12 kids that they invited. And the other 80 kids are there to allow the 10 or 20 kids they want to look at to have games. They're cannon fodder.

Joe LaLeune (01:14:23.147)
Yeah, it's a bit of a gut punch if you show up to a prospect event, thinking you're, you're got the one email and there's a hundred other people there. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:14:30.382)
How many other people have got the same one? It's tough, and everyone wants it to be true. But again, you have to be a sleuth. And I wish it wasn't the case. they've become so good at hiding the fact that it's a generic email. It's really tough on parents, tough on kids.

Joe LaLeune (01:14:45.439)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:14:49.205)
Would you consider that sort of like a secondary net of how they're trying to recruit to schools? Like the primary net is going to be, you know, direct communication. And then these sort of mass emails that go out are maybe a secondary, even like a tracery net to get more people involved. And like you said, it's bit of a fundraiser for the, for the program.

Dennis Joyce (01:15:08.11)
So there's recruiting, and there's fundraising. So if you're sending lots of emails about your prospect day, that's a fundraising.

Joe LaLeune (01:15:11.613)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:15:17.161)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (01:15:17.514)
If you're talking to a player, if they're talking, know, they send you, the coaches, I bet you coaches rather email because they're older, but most coaches are texting, texting and FaceTiming when they want to communicate with you, when you're in that cycle. You know, so yeah, I don't even consider recruiting. It's a fundraising event. If they want to recruit you, you'll know. You're not going to be guessing.

Joe LaLeune (01:15:28.232)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:15:44.401)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be more obvious. should players think about sending emails versus receiving them?

Dennis Joyce (01:15:51.023)
Oh, email sending is so important. But you've got to do it the right way. Again, it's targeted. It's personalized. You can't send out the same email to 700 coaches. Now, I do say, I do reference the fact that there's the shotgun approach. When you're a younger player, I you're like a ninth grader or a 10th grader, and you don't know what you're going to do. And you're not even sure where you should play. It's OK to kind of send out a note.

Joe LaLeune (01:16:02.141)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:16:12.393)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:16:17.408)
that's kind of the same, you know, it's, it's a whole lot of people, but as, as you go through this process, that the number of people you're reaching out to has to shrink to a reasonable amount at the end. But yeah, when you're younger, when you're a freshman or whatever, and you're sending, you know, to every D one coach, just, you know, see if anyone has any interest, that that's okay. But emails have to be personalized to the coach. I like sending emails to each positional coach individuals. Hey, you know, coach Lanning coach, you know, Johnson, you know, separate

Joe LaLeune (01:16:20.647)
Nah, it's Bray and Bray.

Joe LaLeune (01:16:26.442)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:16:34.473)
Hehehe.

Dennis Joyce (01:16:47.352)
emails. I don't know, the way I know you are with your emails, but when I get an email with 17 people on the CC line, I'm like, that ain't really for me. I'm not looking at that. And then you have to have something that is going to catch their eye, which is the videos. And no one's going to get recruited from a video. No one's going to commit you from a video. But what videos do is allow you to take a quick look at you. And they're just looking, is there anything there that catches my eye? Is there something there that's worth

Joe LaLeune (01:16:48.125)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:16:55.079)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:17:14.761)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:17:17.272)
of looking at again. And you know, you want you're gonna get and this people this annoys everybody. You're gonna get out 20 to 30 seconds on a video. That's how much they're gonna watch. You got to make sure that first couple clips are bangers. Maybe if you have really three or four good ones, they'll watch a little bit more, but they're stopping after 40 seconds. Like that's the most you're gonna get. But that's just going to be like, maybe we should keep this one on the list. You know, moves it over here. But

Joe LaLeune (01:17:37.075)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:17:44.136)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:17:46.527)
But you have to be personalized. You have to include film. You have to include your pertinent information. You're not writing an essay. This is not a college essay. This is.

Joe LaLeune (01:17:54.729)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:17:56.013)
giving them information about you in the cleanest sense that they possibly can. And there's other, you know, like IMLCA or IWLCA profiles that have to be included, because that's another way they can go to one place to see everything about you and make it easy. If the goal would be is to give the coaches the easiest way to get all the information about you. So no one's going to read a four page, you know, how much you want to go to UNC, right?

Joe LaLeune (01:18:09.288)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:18:22.715)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:18:23.31)
Here's how big I am. Here's how much I weigh. Here's my position. Here's my high school. Here's my club team. Here's where I'm going to be. Here's my film. I really want to be a Tar Heel because whatever the reason is, thanks a lot. That's it. Make it easy for them.

Joe LaLeune (01:18:35.272)
Yeah, that's what that's, that's a good clarification too. Cause I think a lot of kids like they probably do want to go like above and beyond reaching out to their, you know, top pick school. And so they're going to do more because they think more is better. Um, but really it's like, gotta remember these, these coaches are busy. They've got a thousand emails coming in constantly from people who want to go there and everything else that's already going on there at the school. the, the cleanest way, like bullet point.

Almost format to just get your, your top tier information to them so that they can just digest it quickly. Send it off to the send it off to the coach or the D coach or the goalie coach. Check this guy out, reach out, whatever.

Dennis Joyce (01:19:13.324)
Make it easy for them. Make it easy. Exactly. Yeah, and again, I do think that we spend too much time on video and film.

Like making video, I've done enough videos on making videos for anyone. And the truth is you're not going to get, you don't get committed because of your video. You get noticed. Like you get put, you get to go to the next phase. It gets you past the hurdle. And so it has to be good. It has to be good enough to get you to the next stage, which is, which in most cases is, is a visual.

Joe LaLeune (01:19:28.386)
Mm. Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:19:42.268)
The knock on the door.

Joe LaLeune (01:19:46.843)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:19:51.247)
They're going watch you. Either you're going to, they're going actually come to their prospect day. They're going to go to your next event and they're going to put eyes on you and see were those four or five, six clips that I saw the same kid who was on the field. Guess or no.

Joe LaLeune (01:20:03.747)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, they'll put the effort in if it it looks worth it

Dennis Joyce (01:20:08.43)
You gotta hook them. You gotta hook them.

Joe LaLeune (01:20:10.193)
Yeah. When is follow up appropriate and when does it hurt?

Dennis Joyce (01:20:18.104)
Tough one, tough one, really tough one. So I tell people that I say you should always have a purpose for sending an email. Hey, coach, just want to, know, first email is like, hey, it's who I am, blah, blah, blah, here's my video, whatever. The follow up has to have some value.

Coach, I just wanted to follow up with you. sent my email three weeks ago. I just want to give you an idea of what's going on in our season. We played five games. We've won four of them. I'm leading scorer on the team. We beat our biggest rival. Here's some more video of those first five games that I thought maybe you'd want to see.

Joe LaLeune (01:20:50.695)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:21:00.278)
And now it's not, yes, it's a kind of like ding, ding, ding, I'm still here, which is what you're really doing, but you're adding value. You're telling, even if it's like, hey, I've been in the weight room all winter, I went from 180 to 195 in three months. Right, okay, that's information. You're adding to the story that you're painting about yourself. I think too often it's like,

Hey coach, I sent you my video last month. You didn't respond to me. Here's the same video over again. Can you please look at that this time?

Yeah. That was new, I think.

Joe LaLeune (01:21:36.434)
It's probably not gonna help that maybe is a scenario where it doesn't help your case

Dennis Joyce (01:21:41.197)
Yeah, and again, I think that there's no real, the only problem you can get, the only thing you can do to make it a bad thing, follow-ups, is if you're annoying. Like, you send a follow-up every, and people do, because you know, you're rolling your eyes like, like, no one would do that. Yeah, they do. I get people, hey, hey,

Joe LaLeune (01:21:53.466)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:21:57.251)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:22:06.382)
I sent a note to the coach on Monday and he hasn't responded. Is it OK to send something like, dude, it's Tuesday. Pump the brakes. If you don't hear something by next week, think about putting together an email and then send it at the end of the week. You've got to slow down. But that's the only time you get in real trouble. Coaches are not going to have a real big problem with the same email coming unless you start bothering them. Unless it gets to the point where you're like, oh my god, here's that goddamn email again. Click delete. Be a block.

Joe LaLeune (01:22:11.582)
You

Joe LaLeune (01:22:16.326)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How much patience do you feel is required in this phase of recruiting?

Dennis Joyce (01:22:41.664)
Is that a metric ton? don't know. It's a lot, a ton. It's so important to be patient because it's, look, we all get pulled in on the September 1st. My son played with the number one defenseman in the 26th class, AJ Theodore Kakas. Great kid. Lives down the road from me. He committed at 1201 on June 1st, on September 1st, to Army.

Joe LaLeune (01:22:46.713)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:23:02.279)
Yeah. The first moment.

Dennis Joyce (01:23:11.47)
Like.

He was like, he wanted to go to army so badly. was his dream school. And I think that a lot of people think that this process happens like that. Everyone is like, like AJ where it just, literally happens in like, my God, they call you're done in the, in the best cases, even, know, my son's recruitment process probably lasted two months, you know, cause it takes a long time, even on the best case where you're trying to visit schools and you're trying to learn it. It's very difficult to be.

quick. That's in the best case, right? That's in the best case. For the average player, it's a very long process. And it feels like parents have told me, especially the 27 class because they lost their minds, where they they were sending notes out on, let's say like, September 30, all the spots in D1 are gone. Like, no, they're not.

Joe LaLeune (01:23:42.471)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:23:50.437)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:24:06.512)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:24:09.486)
He goes, yeah, UNC has filled their class. go, UNC is one school of a lot of schools. Just relax. There's places to play. So I think that there's a lot of, you have to have a lot of patience and you have to drown out, block out all the noise because if you don't, you'll be sucked into this, my god, there's no more spots. And inside the cross is pushing out a list that says every school is filled and.

Joe LaLeune (01:24:13.776)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:24:18.829)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:24:34.722)
And it can get insane. So patience is so important and understanding that everything happens in the right time.

Joe LaLeune (01:24:36.411)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:24:41.637)
Do you think like a like a safe window of time to get through the recruiting process? I mean, obviously there's there's lots of scenarios where it goes much longer, but like four months you kind of have a pretty good idea where you're going to go like from September 1st. No, no, no hard fast rules on this. Now.

Dennis Joyce (01:24:56.246)
No. No. No, no. There's no hard fast rules because there are players. I mean, Colgate took their last 26 this September. So that's a full year back when they took the last kit. So.

You look at that and think, and I know that on the girls side, there's a lot more girls programs. And therefore, it takes longer to fill those classes. There's 137 programs versus 68. So there's just almost 2x the number. those classes fill a lot slower. And certain schools don't want to recruit fast. Certain college coaches are like, we'll get to the kids when we get to them. Other schools are like, we've got to fill it up right away.

Joe LaLeune (01:25:20.537)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:25:41.4)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:25:43.457)
So no, there's no like, if you're not finding a home by January 1st, you're got, now it may be, and I think this is probably where you're going with the question, Joe, is you may want to reevaluate who you're targeting. That's probably a fair statement. If you were focused, and again, this kind of is one of those things where I don't think people do this soon enough.

Joe LaLeune (01:26:00.728)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:26:10.342)
is this also goes into the you should know where you are probably going to play at or what your level should be before the recruiting process starts. Because a lot of kids do this. like, I am going to be recruited D1. And nothing happens until first. And nothing happens until January. And they're like, nobody wants me. Like, no, no. People want you. Those people don't.

Joe LaLeune (01:26:18.616)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:26:24.674)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:26:34.03)
But there's all these other people who would love to have you. And that's where you have the pivot, where you see these kids pivoting, and they're like, oh, wow, everything changed. Like, yeah, you started talking to people who are recruiting players like you. And that's not an insult. It's just, it is. It is what it is. So I think that's what happens. I think you see a pivot happen with some kids, especially if they're very narrow focused when they start.

Joe LaLeune (01:26:36.59)
who would love that.

Joe LaLeune (01:26:45.444)
You

Joe LaLeune (01:26:51.36)
No. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:27:02.926)
And I always say, be very wide when you start out, as far as maybe a little D3. There's so many good D3 programs. Some of the D3 programs, some D2 that are strong, and then some D1s. That's OK. Nice broad range of it. And then you can kind of feel, you're getting a lot of calls from the D3 guys and not a lot from the D1 and maybe sprinkling of the D2s. OK, that gives you an idea. Because coaches tend to recruit in areas. Like, you'll get recruited by all the.

Joe LaLeune (01:27:10.574)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:27:31.438)
Liberty League schools in D3, or maybe you're a Big Ten type player. And they kind of all will start fixating on you if you have those set of skills. So if you're only getting recruited by D3s, you're probably a D3 player.

Joe LaLeune (01:27:37.336)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:27:41.7)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:27:45.924)
It's like diversifying your portfolio. You know, you can't just go blue chip stocks all day long. not going to, you know, they fail. You're, you're kind of screwed. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:27:48.27)
100%.

Dennis Joyce (01:27:54.383)
Absolutely. So I think that's the thing. I think that the pivoting occurs. don't think that you should look at and say, if a certain date comes, I'm not going to get recruited. I think that just means you have to open up your view. Like I said, there's a place for everyone. are programs looking for players right now. And the season's starting in two weeks. There's schools that have 21 kids on the roster right now. That's not.

Joe LaLeune (01:28:07.904)
And would you just?

Joe LaLeune (01:28:11.764)
Yeah. Yeah, crazy.

but kind of always, would you say always better to just start more broad and then narrow as you go?

Dennis Joyce (01:28:21.326)
I, well, I do think necessarily, I think you should try to be, understand what you want, right? Because being broad and being like, oh, I got recruited by a bunch of schools that are in the middle of the city and I don't want to ever live in a city, that's not important. I think, yeah, I still think you want to be like, okay, I'm going to talk to some D3s and D2s, D1s and kind of feel it out, especially if you're a good, if you're a decent low level, mid level D1 player.

Joe LaLeune (01:28:28.79)
Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, Still still within your.

Dennis Joyce (01:28:48.15)
And you could maybe wing a spot on a high Nescak or an RIT or a Salisbury or a York. Those are really good lacrosse teams. For Christopher Newport, RPI, you're going to have a really great experience there. And you're going to be a leader on that team versus maybe being the 10th recruit at LeMoyne.

Joe LaLeune (01:28:59.724)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:29:09.152)
Yeah. Yeah. just shifting to some more physical prepared stuff, we, which we did touch on in the sort of the early, you know, recruiting process of what coaches are looking for in terms of like having some size, but being more, you know, explosive and fast and be able to create space. But in today's recruiting landscape, how do coaches weigh physical tools like the size, strength against lacrosse skill?

Dennis Joyce (01:29:35.939)
Well, we talked about it earlier. think the key here is you have to have a whatever that coach is. And it's really important to understand that there are coaches who are like, I will not have a defender who's under 6'2".

Joe LaLeune (01:29:49.26)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:29:49.871)
That was the old Virginia thing. Virginia was always 6 foot 4 defensive. If you were a tall guy, even if you were weak in skills, they wanted you because they could hang a lot of meat on you and make you big strong kid. So every coach has whatever they think is the minimum requirements for their school as far as athleticism, as far as height, weight, quickness, explosiveness, shooting ability. They want that.

Joe LaLeune (01:29:55.991)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:30:13.91)
And until you're over that mark, they're not going to talk to you. And all the other skills do take a second. But once you cross that line,

Joe LaLeune (01:30:14.188)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:30:23.234)
then all those intangibles really do kick in. And that differentiates the players from each other once you get over that. Because there are still a lot of players when you get over that line. But I think that, yeah, there are certain coaches where you have to be the big, strong monster kid. Or they really like shifty attackmen. Or they really, really want defense or they want attackmen who draw slides, take the physical abuse. They want guys who just want

Joe LaLeune (01:30:50.985)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:30:53.168)
back you down. So they whatever it is. And again, it depends. It's no and this is the big thing I go over all the time on the channel is there is no one size fits all. It depends on the coach. It depends on the level. It depends on what the system they're running. And that's going to determine it. So there's no like, oh, but look, if you're going to be six foot five, 240 pounds and run a four to probably give me a home for you.

Joe LaLeune (01:31:04.315)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:31:19.788)
Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:31:19.82)
But everybody else, you just got to get over that limit, whatever that line is, get over that line and they'll talk to you.

Joe LaLeune (01:31:25.75)
And that may, the reason I brought it up again too, is it just may help when you are needing to pivot and make another decision from your original one is, you know, these other elements of what goes into the team come up again. So it's like good to revisit those things. Like does this type of program or this type of division work well for where I am currently or where I want to be?

And just kind of re revisiting when that pivot moment happens, revisit those other elements that come back and don't forget why you chose that top school. And then what do these other schools have? Are they similar or, you know, how do you fit into that, that picture?

Dennis Joyce (01:32:02.849)
I tell everyone who, I live in Rochester, New York. I tell everyone, go watch RIT play lacrosse. Go over there and just look at how monstrous these kids are. They're giants. And they're a Division III, a very strong Division III team. They've won two national championships in the last 10 years or so.

Joe LaLeune (01:32:11.68)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:32:17.641)
Nah.

Dennis Joyce (01:32:27.086)
you and I think seeing any of these teams go watch your local D three team play go there and watch and you realize how physical this game is how fast this game is and how athletic these players are and that's a great because you can sit there and I've seen faces of some of my friends by my son's friends at these games and they go

Joe LaLeune (01:32:36.533)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:32:51.182)
Oh, I thought this was this wasn't very good lacrosse. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Joe LaLeune (01:33:07.658)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:33:12.878)
No, most cases, no. But going and seeing some of these teams play live, because you can see them on film. You're watching a YouTube or a stream of a game. The distance and everything kind of makes things look a little like. You go and sit in the sidelines where they're five yards onto the field, and you quickly realize that if you want to play at any level in college, it's fast. And it's extremely physical. And that's a little eye-opener for some people.

Joe LaLeune (01:33:14.496)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:33:29.536)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:33:36.905)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's probably becomes a really obvious, obvious gap, especially, you know, if you're junior year high school and you're looking at like they're grown men really out there. They've had, they've had three more years of developing through high school. They've had whatever, you know, year they're in at university to develop. And most of those guys will develop a lot in first year, which is like. Perfect transition here because you know, there's more flexibility than ever. So this is where we get into reclassing.

the Jucco route, development years or the portal. How should families think about these options? That was, yeah, that was five very different options, but.

Dennis Joyce (01:34:21.578)
let's take the easy one first. I'm going to stay away from the third rail, if I want, if I like, I need a little pump up on my viewership, I'll do something on reclassing. And that always, because everyone loses their minds on it. So let's take a step back. Let's talk about the portal. Because people are treating the portal like it's the reset button.

Joe LaLeune (01:34:35.401)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:34:46.026)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (01:34:48.126)
I don't like it here. This coach is mean or whatever. I'll enter the portal and everything. There was on the men's side, there's a portal in the middle of the year now, right before the season starts. So it starts in December 15th, think, something like that. And it goes until a little while ago. And it allows a person to go through fall ball, figure out if they're going to do well. And if they don't like it, they can hop in the portal mid season and jump to another team.

Joe LaLeune (01:34:51.011)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:35:02.143)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (01:35:16.952)
There were 19 kids in the boys side, 19 kids entered the portal mid-season. Four found homes.

Joe LaLeune (01:35:25.905)
E.

Dennis Joyce (01:35:27.67)
And there's also a portal for grad students. If you have a fifth year, you can go in the portal at that point whenever. And there's 28 kids who want to play next year with their fifth year. And as of today, and it's a little bit slower, so it's probably a misleading number, three have found homes.

Joe LaLeune (01:35:41.363)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:35:47.427)
So people keep thinking this portal is so magical because they see the football. They see all the people. But they don't talk about the thousands of kids in the portal who never find homes. So once you enter the portal, you're done. Most programs, you're done. You enter the portal. You forfeit your scholarship. You are off the team. You're not part of the team. You're not lifting with them. Now, some coaches,

Joe LaLeune (01:36:04.809)
Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:36:13.358)
will allow you to test the waters in the portal, and they're kind of cool about it, they are exceptions to the rules. They are not the normal. Normally, it's, you don't want to play for us? Great. Good luck. Close the door on your way out. So, you know, I mean, there was a lot of movement on the women's side. think it was 24 out of 32 girls who entered the mid-season portal found homes.

Joe LaLeune (01:36:18.665)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:36:22.12)
Nah, duh.

Dennis Joyce (01:36:41.026)
But that's the nature of the women's game, there's being so many more teams. so the portal's not the end all be all. And it's scary that people think that they'll just jump ship and it'll be easy for them.

Joe LaLeune (01:36:50.889)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:36:55.999)
Well, it's becomes public, right? Like it's pretty loud declaration that you don't want to be on that in that program anymore. and you could definitely see how coaches would, you know, just be done with you at that point. You've, you've made it really clear. You don't want to be here. Good luck.

Dennis Joyce (01:37:11.694)
And what happens if you lose your scholarship, in most cases you lose your scholarship, you're alienated from your teammates, your 40 brothers or sisters that you came there with, now do you stay in that school? Let's say you don't find a home to play lacrosse. Do you stay there? You have to leave because you don't have the money anymore? You have to make the decision to go in the portal. And look, there's a lot of good reasons for it. And you look at the women's side, the Colgate nonsense that was happening there where the coach was lunatic.

Joe LaLeune (01:37:21.94)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:37:28.617)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:37:40.82)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:37:41.661)
of girls who just bailed on that program and that was a really good reason to use the portal. But there's a lot of people choosing the portal because it's hard or they don't like it or you know it's not what they were and that's it's fine. It's a reasonable reason if you're not happy don't stay somewhere but understand that that's not a guarantee you're going to go somewhere. So I really tell people like who I've had parents say well if I don't like it we'll just we'll just you know we'll switch we'll just go out of it.

Joe LaLeune (01:37:45.555)
Yeah, totally.

Joe LaLeune (01:37:56.328)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:38:09.597)
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's not a quick, fast decision. And you definitely want to think long and hard of that. think probably what a lot of people think of it too, as like free agency, like as a pro athlete, you're like, I'm, you I'm becoming up as a free agent. I'm going to just get picked up by some other team because I'm a pro, but those, those numbers are scary. Like three people got picked up out of whatever you said, 24, 28. That's a, that's a good reason to think long and hard about.

Dennis Joyce (01:38:19.651)
Yes.

Dennis Joyce (01:38:27.406)
There's a lot of them out there.

Joe LaLeune (01:38:37.915)
What your decision is going to be, especially for, you know, young guys, maybe facing some adversity and challenging questions for the first time. You know, you're the best kid in your city and all of sudden you get to a whatever program and the coach says, you're not as good as you think. And that hurts. And you think, I'll just pull the parachute here and get out.

Dennis Joyce (01:38:56.238)
Yeah, and remember, it works both ways. There are kids who are going D3, good D3, or low level D1. And their entire goal,

Joe LaLeune (01:39:06.695)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:39:11.198)
is to become all conference at, in the CA, CA is pretty good, in whatever conference and then get out and kind of move up. So you're not competing, you're not as a recruit, as a high school recruit, you're not competing against other high school kids, you're also competing against all the kids who were playing D3 last year who are ready to move up and jump into D1. So the whole recruiting, building a team from a coach's perspective

Joe LaLeune (01:39:17.371)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right.

Dennis Joyce (01:39:41.025)
has turned over on itself. It's like, I have a choice now. I can take a 22-year-old kid who has maybe one or two years of eligibility, or I can take an 18-year-old kid who may or may not work out. He may or may not have a workout that he may or may not have the skills. So there's a lot of things going on right now. So let's go on the hard one, which is the the reclassing. That one is the third rail for me. That one is really tough because.

Joe LaLeune (01:39:45.822)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:39:52.06)
Yeah, yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:40:09.024)
If you look at the results, if you look at the top 100 for the last three or four years in inside of lacrosse from a high school recruitment perspective, the majority of those kids are prep kids. At the top of the pyramid, they are all reclass kids because they're bigger and they're stronger and they're more mature and all the things you'd expect for a kid who gets to have an extra year of life.

Joe LaLeune (01:40:21.585)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:40:37.986)
But I think what people don't understand is these kids are good before they reclass. So like James Holbro, who was the number one recruit in the 27 class, he's going to go to UNC, part of that unbelievable recruiting class they had this year. My son played with him for years on the club team. He lives the next town over. He was probably, being conservative, he was probably a top five attackman as a 26.

Joe LaLeune (01:40:45.095)
Right.

Joe LaLeune (01:40:53.777)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:40:59.677)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:41:07.95)
Probably top five. And then he reclassed and he became the number one overall recruit. So he was taking a base that was really, really good and then really leveraged that year to lift and eat and work on the few holes he had in his game. And he just filled in, you know, the rough edges.

Joe LaLeune (01:41:14.086)
Right.

Joe LaLeune (01:41:18.695)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:41:30.544)
Now.

Dennis Joyce (01:41:30.784)
and became that. It's not like, and this is where people get frustrated, is like, they think, he was a terrible player, went to prep school and became a fantastic, no, no, no, the clay was already half molded, you know, and they just finished it off, right? That's the difference. So I think that, you know, you used to see a few kids go to prep school and reclass and it was okay, you know, maybe they were early birth date or they were undersized. had their late bloomers that that's their term. And then they went and

Joe LaLeune (01:41:43.226)
Right.

Joe LaLeune (01:41:58.886)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:42:00.748)
that or they were just a family thing. My father and his father and his father went to Eaton and whatever. And that's kind of changed now where it's almost people are talking about reclassing and prep school as like the only way you can get into college. And I don't think that is true because not everyone has the skill set.

Joe LaLeune (01:42:09.948)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:42:26.178)
to begin with, that clay you started with still has to be really good. And then, obviously, another year working on it makes you better. But if you're a really good player, and you're in public school, and you graduate, you play, you're going to get recruited also. But it's one of those things where I think there's so much hype now about prep school is the way. Look at all the success that XYZ player had because they spent an extra year.

Joe LaLeune (01:42:41.03)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:42:52.038)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:42:55.008)
And I don't think it's My kids did not reclass. All three of them were public school, high school, graduated on age, and are playing.

Joe LaLeune (01:43:03.324)
Yeah. And again, like the other highlights that we've talked about, it's like the top story gets highlighted, but there's thousands of stories of guys who maybe went that route and didn't move up in their rankings. They probably developed better. You know, they probably got stronger in that time period, but the likelihood that they went from top five to the number one pick, you know, that's only happened a couple of

Dennis Joyce (01:43:25.9)
You know, there's, to that point, there was a player in my area. God, long time ago, very good player, extremely good player. And he got recruited to Marist. Good program, red Fox's. I liked that program a lot. He got recruited them out of high school and they decided that a PG year he could go PG and, then kind of raise his stock and end up maybe going somewhere better.

Joe LaLeune (01:43:33.499)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:43:52.325)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:43:52.543)
He wasn't a good player. Now, he was a smaller, statured player, right? So maybe he grows a little bit. So he goes to Salisbury. I think it was Salisbury. And he kills it. That's Salisbury, right? He's an all-league, all-prep, whatever the titles are. And when he finished up there, he went to Marist. Because that's the level of lacrosse he was at.

Even though he was still a smaller player and everything else, but he was an extremely good player, went on to Marist. Had a fantastic, fantastic career there. Now, did it hurt him? No. Going to prep school didn't hurt him. He probably became more mature, learned how to live on his own with a little bit of oversight as opposed to being in the dorm room at the college. So there were benefits above and beyond the lacrosse. But he did not improve his.

Joe LaLeune (01:44:16.741)
Right.

Joe LaLeune (01:44:25.083)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:44:35.973)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:44:46.382)
where he was when he got out. was the same place. So that's why I say, it's not magic. They'll let you, I think I use the term, the prep schools, maybe get you closer to your ceiling. You still have a ceiling. This is the best you're ever going to be. Most people never get even close to that. Maybe they get to 80 % of their ceiling. Maybe prep school allows you to get to 90 % of your ceiling.

Joe LaLeune (01:44:48.506)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:45:02.372)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:45:09.284)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:45:12.802)
But your ceiling is still whatever that ceiling is. It doesn't help you raise your ceiling. That's how I think about it.

Joe LaLeune (01:45:17.048)
Right. Yeah. With parents, coaches and recruiting relationships, you've said recruiting works best when parents and coaches are aligned. From your view, what behaviors help players and what quietly hurt them?

Dennis Joyce (01:45:38.52)
say that? Okay, so what behaviors from a player perspective?

Joe LaLeune (01:45:43.642)
from the parents, parents being aligned with the coaches.

Dennis Joyce (01:45:48.11)
parents really have to learn to just go away. And I really mean that because we are as parents and I am a parent first, right? We're terrible at evaluating talent. And we're terrible at understanding what they're trying to accomplish from a team perspective.

Joe LaLeune (01:45:52.825)
Yeah.

Joe LaLeune (01:46:05.828)
Mm.

Joe LaLeune (01:46:12.313)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:46:13.546)
Very few parents have honest conversations with their kids. They end up, you know, ganging up on coaches. They hear one side of the story. They don't, I think that if you're going to be in, if you want your kid to be as successful as possible, you have to trust the person you're, you're giving your kid over to somebody and you have to trust that they know what they're doing. And they may do things that you don't like.

Joe LaLeune (01:46:34.809)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:46:39.278)
and there may be decisions you don't like, and you need to just go away. I really think parents are, a lot of parents, are 95 % of the problems of youth sports today. Because we're either trying to capture a glory we never had, or...

Joe LaLeune (01:46:52.74)
Mm.

Dennis Joyce (01:46:58.766)
we think we're smarter than we are, or we, my local high school coach said, he a great saying, he tells it every year. I've been in the high school program in my area for 12 years. Like I've had a kid in the program for 12 years straight. So I've heard this story like 12 times, probably more than that. He talks about his mother was a hairdresser.

Joe LaLeune (01:47:11.188)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dennis Joyce (01:47:20.086)
So he would be after school going into the beauty parlor where she worked. And he would sweep up and kind of just do his homework there. And that's where he would be a lot. So he says, I've seen a million perms. I've seen a million dye jobs on hair. And I've seen people cut hairs forever. You do not want me doing any of those things, right? Because even though I've watched it over and over and over, I'm not an expert in it.

Joe LaLeune (01:47:46.702)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:47:46.819)
And he says that about the parents. He's like, I know you've seen a lot of games, and I've known you watched a lot of on TV. It's not the same thing. You have to trust me in this process, in that I know what we're doing. So I think if you're going to be a parent in this whole thing, it's best to just

Joe LaLeune (01:47:59.876)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:48:08.622)
Enjoy the games. I tell people time. Enjoy it. It's going to go away and you're not going to have it. And if you're going to go through life complaining and crying and making everyone around you. Misery because you're bitching and moaning about the decisions or the pass or the coaching time out or whatever it is. You're not going to enjoy it. You're to make everyone around you and not enjoy it. And then it's going to be gone. It's going to be gone and you can't get it back. So just shush and enjoy it.

Joe LaLeune (01:48:26.912)
Mm-hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:48:34.85)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:48:38.082)
That's my advice to all parents. It's hard. It's hard.

Joe LaLeune (01:48:38.456)
That's great. That's good advice, especially from someone who's had three boys go through it.

Dennis Joyce (01:48:45.304)
Two boys, two boys and a girl.

Joe LaLeune (01:48:46.432)
sorry. Two boys and a girl. Apologies. so the bit of a bonus question, just kind of topical, what impact, if any, do you think the Olympics will have on college lacrosse programs, especially with the first Olympics being hosted in the U S.

Dennis Joyce (01:49:03.662)
think this is a great topic. My daughter has been playing with Team Ireland as a goalie for a little bit. And I don't know what's going to become of it, if that's going to kind of pan out and she'll end up doing it. So I have a good exposure to the sixes game. And I don't know if it's actually going to change anything in the college game. But I think it's going to change things, especially in the non-hotbed areas, these places that are

Joe LaLeune (01:49:10.488)
Nice.

Joe LaLeune (01:49:18.137)
Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:49:33.57)
becoming much more enriched with lacrosse. The East Kentuckies and these Midwest places where lacrosse, maybe you can't get a 10 on 10 or 12 on 12 for the girls. Sixes becomes this fantastic alternative. And it's going to get a lot of attention. And I think we're going to see a lot of growth at the youth level, because it's so much easier to put a tournament on with sixes, because you smaller fields, and you can get more teams.

Joe LaLeune (01:49:46.521)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:50:02.882)
Games are shorter and they're faster going. I think we're going to see a little change in that perspective. I think sixes is a great game. I'm not a huge fan of it from the guys perspective. I'm much more of a field guy or a box guy. Sixes for the boys always feels like it's a, I'd rather watch them play box. We're going to have a short field, but that's my own opinion. But for the girls, sixes is fantastic. Sixes is, mean, I know though, there's a lot of box for women now. Girls are playing box, especially in Canada, but it's not as prevalent.

Joe LaLeune (01:50:17.897)
Shoot up. hmm. Mm hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.

Dennis Joyce (01:50:31.776)
I think you're going to see the youth programs embrace it. It's just easier to put it on. And I think there's going to be a tremendous growth there. And then that style eventually will make its way up into the college ranks. I think, I think we're going to see after the Olympics or on the lead up to the Olympics, an excitement for this very fast paced, very exciting, quick goal scoring game. And I think we're going to see a huge growth in that, especially in non-hotbed areas, because it's just easier to do.

Joe LaLeune (01:51:01.65)
Yeah, that's that's cool insight I think what was really cool the women's worlds was such a great expression of the women's box game and how much it has improved especially, you know in the last 20 years But those girls were impressive to watch at the at the world level I agree with you with the sixes especially with the with the men's side It becomes like a bit of a shootout game because guys can just bomb it from

20 yards out and you know, it's a quick turnaround. Um, it would be curious to see like, especially with some programs, um, constricting their, their funding, like they don't have as much funding if there became sort of a, you know, a secondary opportunity for those schools to have sixes programs where they could run, you know, tournaments around, around the country and not have.

Not have to carry a 40 team roster. could carry an 18 team roster and actually travel around with smaller groups and still be able to play, still have the fun of the, of the sport, but, know, potentially develop some players that could, that could play at the world level.

Dennis Joyce (01:52:05.838)
I think that's a very interesting idea. I would love to see that happen. mean, more opportunities to play lacrosse would be great. But yeah, I think you're going to see a change. It's going to be slow. It's going to be slow. But I think you could definitely see that. I just think that the game, when people see sixes, if you're not a lacrosse guy and you watch sixes, you get pulled into it. That's why I say, if you go watch a box game, you can't take your eyes off it. It's so much fun. I'm a huge box guy. mean, being right on the other side of the border makes it easier for me to enjoy box.

Joe LaLeune (01:52:14.516)
Yeah, for sure.

Joe LaLeune (01:52:25.43)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:52:29.162)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis Joyce (01:52:35.886)
When you see a field game sometimes, it can be a little boring. I love it, but it can be a little boring, but you don't get that in sixes. It's it's boom, boom, boom, boom. And I think people are going to really grab onto that.

Joe LaLeune (01:52:40.31)
to be slow depending on the style, depending on the style.

Joe LaLeune (01:52:50.261)
I think so too for the Olympics, like the audience that is the total layman. They, they maybe have never even heard of it to see this fast, exciting version of it. We'll draw people in and then, you know, it'll expose them to different, different versions of it as well. Well, that's great. So I've got one final question for you for people listening who want to learn more or work with you. How can they connect with you?

Dennis Joyce (01:53:03.873)
Absolutely.

Dennis Joyce (01:53:14.327)
best way is lax dad recruiting on tik tok and on instagram where i try to post every day. am also available through dms to people who have questions. I don't have a service. I am not charging anyone any fees. I do everything because a million people helped me along this journey so I try to return it. I'm trying to pay it forward so you know I'm always happy to answer questions or help you figure out if an email is really real or not or all that kind of stuff so

Joe LaLeune (01:53:34.177)
Hmm.

Joe LaLeune (01:53:43.552)
You

Dennis Joyce (01:53:45.005)
Look me up on both TikTok and on Instagram.

Joe LaLeune (01:53:49.01)
Love that. And I highly recommend the follow, especially if you are an athlete or a parent who's trying to navigate these muddy, muddy waters and get your kids to a, to a school and get a good education out of it. We will always, put in the show notes, how people can connect with you and give some direct links to both those social medias. Awesome. That is well, thank you so much for joining me today. We had a nice long conversation, covered lots of topics and, we'll chat soon.

Dennis Joyce (01:54:17.881)
Thank you, Joe, I appreciate it.