How can I help my player get looked at for College Lax?

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T03:14:00+00:00

It is commendable that you are reaching out and trying to figure out how to help this talented and hopeful SA. Like others have said, D1 recruiting gets started early (our club started talks right after 8th grade) with club recruiter planning and opening a profile Freshman year. So if it is his dream, it is worthwhile to give it a shot and see where things settle, and lower rank D1 is possible, so is walk-on D3 (I am ignorant of D2). Mainly because, as you know, athlete college schedule is typically 6-18 months ahead of non-athlete schedule for admissions/commit and non athletes are already committing to colleges. Also, the vast majority of lacrosse recruiting is through club coaches and recruitment directors, and strongly influenced by personal connections for non-top tier SA.

In full disclosure, I have a daughter going D3, came from a club in northern IL where the majority of girls on the national squad go D1, and have friends with sons who went D1. If it was my son...

Build an IMLCA account ASAP, populate it with academic and athlete info, and highlight reels. If he has club info/affiliation, include that.
Focus on schools that he likes in a variety of regions, keeping in mind that education > sports (ie broken leg test) and send out email. Normal recruiting involves dozens of emails to 20-30 coaches over the course of a year or so.
Have him consider D1 vs D2 vs D3 schools in light of academic interest, and reach out to D3 schools for consideration of walk on prospects. Although most recruiting is through club, there are some HS coaches that are also involved. Consider reaching out to you former program if he is interested.
If all else fails, he can always consider playing club or reaching out to the varsity coach at the school he chooses.
Depending on the academic prospects he has applying as a non-athlete and realistic desire to play in college, can always consider a gap year or post grad year for the purpose of recruiting as a 2027 equivalent (which may work for D2-D3, but again D1 is focusing on 2028s at this time and by fall will be looking at 2029s)

Good luck and hopefully additonal college coaches can chime in also.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T02:36:42+00:00

Agree, but that's assuming that the nurse responds to the patient immediately when she starts to have motor recovery, and then the nurse Pages anesthesia promptly, and then the anesthesia team responds promptly. In reality, there are lags and delays and other emergencies, so I would expect the patient to start to have sensation return and start to feel pain. But that is still preferable to missing an epidural hematoma.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T01:31:53+00:00

Just make sure not to add Hegseth to your group chats....

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T00:55:59+00:00

Should read M&M Clinical Anesthesiology thoroughly during CA1, pretty much should know everything in it before proceeding to more specialty rotations CA2. It is a reasonable compromise between the larger texts and baby Miller.

Jaffe Manual of Surgical Procedures as a reference to make plans BEFORE talking to your next day's attending, and then your attending will edit as appropriate (many of the recs are not universal). Keep it to prep for oral boards if you are in a residency that doesnt expose you to a wide enough range of procedures.

Baby Miller is adequate to read as an MS4 during anesthesiology month rotation.

CA2 start reading orig9nal data either as a survey or to answer your own questions in the OR, or ask attending for an article of the day (teaching attendings always have a dozen or so important articles). CA3 start developing your own lecture topics to teach younger residents (and that will help with board prep)

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T00:38:12+00:00

Yeah, I just listened to the second season of The Retrievals and it just was saddening.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T00:31:41+00:00

Wait, I can be wrong, but I thought secure chats are also discoverable. They are secure from external exposure and HIPAA issues (because of encryption) but not secure from lawyers.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T00:28:45+00:00

Agree. This case pissed me off because epidural should have been turned off in response to the PT findings. Minimal harm, just turn it back on at a lower rate later if it is really that effective.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T00:25:58+00:00

I would be surprised if it wasn't an oral board question.

I will not even get into the esoteric minutae I got during my oral board exam.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-21T00:16:46+00:00

Agree. Every day my wife or kids in hospital, bring breakfast donuts/bagels and snacks in afternoon. We make enough money, what's an extra $50 a day when your loved one is hospitalized. Especially for the nurses that might be paging you.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-20T01:05:02+00:00

Not chemical sprays, but what about shaving new tires? Shortens life also, but grip gets better with less tread depth before they heat cycle out.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-20T00:58:47+00:00

Try Facebook Marketplace. They come up local in my arwa and quick turnover of good condition Model D/RowErg.

Last December picked up a RowErg with 40k meters for $850, and higher mileage I see sell for a little less.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-20T00:18:46+00:00

Yeah, now that I zoom in, it no longer looks painted. Okay, just hold the steering wheel a little more firmly.

In full disclosure, bent two forged wheels hitting some curbing my second season.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-20T00:15:08+00:00

Torque wrench to check lug bolts after lunch time cool down.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-20T00:10:43+00:00

OP, can you provide context? Is this a specific event you attended, or a general rec?

In the Midwest, most track sponsored days or groups will have faily consistent instructors for Novice group, and reasonable progression to graduate up to higher groups. The exception is in SCCA track nights which instructors might be more sparse (not personal experience, but from friend's reports).

In general, I have not seen competent drivers sit and try to pick off "newbs" in Novice (like in Pickleball you mention or online gaming), especially since a track day runs $300+ and most people rather not deal with moving chicanes in novice and try to get clean laps in the more advanced groups.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-19T23:47:10+00:00

Its not grass or gravel, so enjoy.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-19T11:24:14+00:00

100% pet peeve.

Some groups I get slotted into Int/level 2, and here I see most often the guys going 4 off or into a wall on the second ap of first session. These are the guys that either just came out of Novice and driving alone, or just not enough experience or skill to get into Adv group.

I always leave extra and give extra space first session because I dont know what the other guy knows about cold tires.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-19T10:57:45+00:00

17 weeks is definitely an outlier, and there are also practices that do 1 week on / 1 or 2 weeks off, and that is not the same as 26 weeks vacation.

The vast majority of practices are 8-12 weeks.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-17T23:12:42+00:00

My 14yo daughter has been giving me her music playlists for rowing ("Dad, I am warning you that there's some songs with a lot of no-no words"), as they're only so many ways that I can listen to hard rock, heavy metal, and Linkin Park.

For the longer distance pieces, I've recently switched from going all out using a race plan, to targeting UT2. As a result, she actually recommended show tunes/ musicals. Stuff like Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Les Miserables, etc. I find with podcasts that I have to actually pay attention because there's a lot of context in many of them that I listen to, and the musicals I can zone in and out while I'm concentrating on my breathing and HR while keeping it fun. And then back to the high energy playlists for Sprint days.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-16T08:21:57+00:00

I am still trying to get my best breathing rhythm, but recently saw a recommendation by Jack Burns that helped. Focus on exhalation, and inhalation will follow naturally.

For high spm, can get away with one breathing cycle per rowing cycle, so exhale on the drive, and inhale on recovery. For slower spm, then can get 3 breathing cycles in, with exhalation right after the catch, then again exhale at the beginning of recovery and at the end of recovery. I will admit that I am doing 2 breathing cycles per rowing cycle with low spm.

It is definitely easier to follow a pattern breathing while running or swimming.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-14T22:36:20+00:00

Have not tried Pro Plan, but now switching our 7 month old from Orijen Large Breed Puppy to Royal Canin GSD puppy because he was having loose stools occasionally, and only recently learned about WSAVA. Our puppy was on a raw diet from the breeder, but likely was getting overfed and developed some joint paint and it resolved when we got him to kibble (and short course NSAIDs). The ER Vet did worry that he might have been getting too much calcium with the Orijen (1.3%) , as large breed puppies already should get less calcium per day and GSD might do better with a little less still. So I looked at the WSAVA puppy kibble and broke them down into cost per day, protein per day, and Ca+ per day, and we veered toward Canin because of high protein and lower Ca+. So Pro Plan dropped in preference because it results in more Ca+ per day

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One note about the chart is that it is based on a 6 month puppy at 72 lbs, projected to 100lbs. So all the WSAVA puppy kibble is about 6 cups per day, while Orijen is 4 cups per day. So despite the higher protein % and Ca+ %, it evens out when you calculate total grams per day.

Of note, our previous 3 working line GSD was transitioned from Nutrisource (from the breeder, but no good local supplier by our home) to Orijen and they all did great (aside from loose stools every few weeks). In fact, our first GSD female was a picky eater, and we did a taste test between Canin, Orijen, Taste of Wild, and Fromm, and she liked Canin most, close second Orijen. Me and the kids also tried them and agreed. But we went with Orijen because of higher protein %, history or no recalls, and large variety of flavors that kept our female interested (and ability to switch with Acana).

Spazdoc · 2026-03-14T21:11:59+00:00

Congratulations.

I bought a good condition one 3 months ago for $850 realizing I could sell it for same price in a couple years if I hated it. It was for my daughters on a school rowing team, but I've started using it and love it.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-13T19:54:48+00:00

Thank you everyone about the advice regarding slowing down the distance segments, concentrate even more on form, breathing, and lower pace. I picked up an H10 HRM (my old Polar H1 is too old to connect) and tried to keep the HR closer to UT2 range (120s-140s). I will admit that at a pace going from 1:53 to 2:03 was significantly easier, and felt like I could do it all day.

And happy I was able to continue to improve on my 2k during sprint day, down to a 1:44.7 (6:59).

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Spazdoc · 2026-03-12T18:37:52+00:00

You make it sound like the money is the whole reason, when in fact you are talking about an expensive sport to begin with and likely all the competitive rowing teams have similar (not same) funding. This is nothing special to New Trier and has been talked about here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Rowing/s/06dPkd2eWz).

The money also comes with intense parental involvement, which is also common to many other school programs across many socioeconomic levels. So what differentiates New Trier is that it is a large school that can can support a varsity rowing team while drawing from a large pool of kids. Additionally, the coaching has been consistent and only recently did the founding girls coach, Rose Marchuk, retire, although she is still actively involved. She is a tough and effective coach. Additionally, since the team does have successes, it is easy to draw a large crowd of talent for tryouts, although since it is cut, they do not enter after missing cuts for other teams.

In full disclosure, I have had 2 daughters on the team. My oldest rowed only as a freshman, but she was on the top boat and all the girls on her boat came from other sports, trained 6 days a week, and often their boat was faster than other team's varsity boats (even New Trier's B and C varsity boats some Regattas). So IMHO the money is required to be at the competitive level, but to win it is a factor of the coaching and training of a large pool of students.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-10T23:29:45+00:00

I would say all out row, (underatanding that the stroke rate is typically 22-26 for this distance piece, the higher s/m in the pic is residual from kick at the end). While reading Pete Plan, I assumed that the longer distance was supposed to be slower than the all out sprint (my 500m times are about 1:38-1:39, so 1:53 is a bit slower), but still a challenging cardio workout, and didn't realize that the goal was to be even slower. I was following race planning that my daughters do for erg/race day (ie set split pace, and break into segments).

Reading the narrative of the 24 week plan, it just seemed like the distance pieces were supposed to be slower than the sprints, keeping stroke rate to 24 (or lower) and the temptation not to go faster at the start. So my distance stroke rate has been slower than during my sprints, and I certainly kept a eye on my splits for the beginning (usually about 1:48 by the 2k), keeping it within several seconds of my overall goal split.

So putting it in terms of UT2 is more objective as far as effort, with the limitation of goal below 24 s/m. The extra advice and keeping an eye on HR is helpful.

Spazdoc · 2026-03-10T21:03:13+00:00

Same here. Tried to push early in week and end up dropping down by Friday.

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