To Club Team or Not to Club Team that is the question?

The answer is your mileage may vary. If you're fortunate and good enough, or if your child is good enough at lacrosse to try out and play on one or multiple club teams, that's great. It can only be advantageous for you and provide options to assess what you're looking for in a respective club.

Alignment

What I mean by alignment is to look into these factors below to consider when you think about IF and WHAT club team you'd want to pursue to join. Align on:

• Staff: Players tend to follow their coaches (off-season) and play with respective team(s) during the fall and summer sessions. Or even opposite, some may want to look for coaches that are not on their primary team to get different points of view from coaches in the region, or the thought of being coached by other ex-collegiate players (or other pedigrees) who exclusively coach club teams could also be enticing for young players.

• Players: Players tend to follow their other teammates and friends. If you're using your summer to get better, staying with your team is great and continues that chemistry build. On the flip side, I actually know of players that want to join teams that are NOT their own teammates because they want to "see the competition" and build their lacrosse player's circle wider.

• Travel:  Look at the tournaments, do you want to stay in-state or want to travel? I've heard folks join teams and come to realize later the travel for tourneys created way too much conflict, either schedule or cost.

• Cost: Yeah, I've heard it's a "money grab" and for every great club, there are some that may still be finding their way. At the end of the day, ANY club could be deemed a money pit when it's defined that you're not getting your return of value/investment. Align your goal - a club that only goes .500 at tournaments, BUT travels out of state to play teams across the country, practices 2-3 times per week, values playing/rotation, and has a low ratio of coach to players. Maybe you're not getting the Instagram pic of a tourney trophy, but the chances of that player getting better and gaining experience are pretty high. I'd double-click on any club that seems disorganized, unsure of full coaching staff, little communication, and unstandardized practices - I'd save my money.

• Sport Commitment: I know many parents to a certain grade or age where they will not join travel teams for fear of making their athlete a one-sport athlete too early, and the club teams may take away the time and capacity to venture into other sports or try something new. There are only so many days in the year and time they can focus on a sport.

  
  

There are probably several factors to consider, but I wanted to give a high-level idea and thought process of what to possibly look into first when you're looking at these teams.

...and if you happen to join a travel team that goes out of state and you're from Texas, what better way to represent lacrosse and the LoneStar state than with some AustinLaxWorx threads.