From The Editor:
We’re back!
We played our last tournament of the 2022 Summer July 15th-17th at the NLF National Championships and the 2 months since then have been a whirlwind.
The week after NLF, we evaluated over 1,000 players across our Team 91 Charlotte and Team 91 South teams. We’ll have 15 different teams in Charlotte and 9 teams through our Team 91 South program, which brings together the top players from across the southeast region. That’s 24 different teams, 24 different coaching staffs, 24 different schedules and like 2,000 pairs of shorts and shirts that need to be designed, ordered, organized, and distributed. Needless to say, it has kept us busy!
In August, our Team 91 South 2024s were invited to play at Inside Lacrosse’s Elite 8 event. The event brings together 8 of the best teams in the 2024 class to play games in the hours leading up to September 1st, when college coaches can officially begin recruiting the 2024 class. The talent at the event was ridiculous and our guys had the chance to compete against a lot of the top players in the class. Sine the event, those guys have gone on to commit to play collegiately at schools like Duke, Virginia, Georgetown, UNC, Yale, Harvard, Maryland and more. It was an awesome experience and an honor for our players and program.
We have also had our own guys committing to play at the college level too over the last few weeks. Since that last day on the field at NLF, we have had about 30 different players across our Team 91 Charlotte and Team 91 South programs commit to play college lacrosse. That’s a lot of guys accomplishing their lifelong goal to play at the college level that have all come through our programs! You can check out our Team 91 Charlotte and South commitments here. Our players continue to raise the bar in terms of players from the Carolinas going to play college lacrosse. The quantity and quality of players committing to play at the next level has never been greater. It has been extremely impressive, and it is a special thing to be a part of!
In September, we kicked off a new year. Our Charlotte teams have started their weekly skill sessions and team practices while our South teams have gotten together for training camps ahead of their Fall tournaments in October and November. We also kicked off 5 different Fall programs which are open to any player interested in getting better at lacrosse!
On Friday nights, we host specialty training for goalies and faceoff specialists. On Saturdays, we run 3 different levels of academy training for players. We have something for young players that are picking up a stick for the first time (our Intro Academy), players with some experience that want to improve in the offseason (our Advanced Academy) and our Impact Training program focused on helping the best players get better. We want to continue to raise the bar in terms of players from the Carolinas going to play college lacrosse and our academy training programs are a huge part of that!
We’re also hosting our Fall Free Clinic Series. You can learn more here. It’s become one of my favorite things we do! We make a serious investment in growing the sport in the Carolinas and our free clinic series prove it. What better way to get sticks in hands than giving families a free option to try the sport for the first time.
One thing we really want to focus on this Fall is telling the story of what we are doing and why we are doing it. We put a lot of thought into what we are doing on and off the field, but we admittedly need to do a better job of explaining that. Over the next few weeks, we’ll use The Scoop to highlight our approach to instruction and development and how our academy programs, leagues and travel teams all factor into that. We’ll share some of the drills we are doing at training sessions, and we’ll also use social media to give a look inside to our practices and training sessions (you can follow us at @Team91CLT on Instagram / Twitter and turn on those notifications!).
We’ll also get back to our Player Spotlights! I mentioned our roughly 30 players that committed to play college lacrosse since late July. We want to continue to highlight all our guys and the success they have had while also educating our younger players and parents about the recruiting process. Every player’s process is different, and we have found the Player Spotlights to be very helpful for our young guys as they start to think about someday playing college lacrosse.
This is all to say, the Fall is shaping up to be busy! We’re on the field 7 days a week helping young lacrosse players get better and we couldn’t be more excited about it. The future is bright for our players, and we can’t wait to get to work this Fall.
Ryan Flanagan
