Tryout season is here, and there’s one question every club lacrosse parent is asking themselves right now: how do I actually choose a club lacrosse team that is the right program for my kid?
Ten years ago this was easy. If your kid wanted to play club lacrosse, you had one team, maybe two, in driving distance. Today, depending on where you live, you might be choosing between seven or eight. More options sounds great until you’re the one trying to tell them apart on a Tuesday night with a tryout flyer in each hand.
Here’s what actually matters when you’re sorting through the options — and the red flags that nobody tells you about until you’re already three months into a season you wish you’d researched harder.
Part-Time or Full-Time Commitment
This is the first fork in the road, and it’s bigger than most parents expect going in. Some clubs run a few months in the fall and a few months in the spring. Others run year-round — and I mean it, weekly commitment from September 1 through the end of July.
If your kid genuinely loves the sport and wants that level of immersion, a year-round program means more development and a stick in their hand all year. It also means more money out of your pocket and less family time back. We know families who’ve gone the seasonal route, and the trade-off is real on both sides. Their summers open up — more flexibility, more normal-kid time, less of the calendar owned by lacrosse. But it does show on the field. The kids who play and train year-round are usually noticeably sharper by mid-summer, and that gap is hard to close once tryouts roll around again. Neither path is wrong. It depends on what your family actually wants this season to look like.
Cost
Let’s not pretend this isn’t a factor, because it is. We’ve covered the full breakdown in The Real Cost of Club Lacrosse, but the short version: you’re looking at anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $10,000-plus a year depending on the program. Can your family afford the high end? And even if you can — do you want to put that much into a sport?
It’s worth sitting with that question honestly before tryouts, not after you’ve already paid the deposit. Cost isn’t just the club fee, either. Factor in tournament travel, hotels, gear that gets outgrown every year, and the showcase circuit if your kid gets to that age. We’ve found the number people quote you at the info session is rarely the number you actually spend by June. Ask current families what they actually spent last season, not what the club says it costs — that single question will tell you more than the website ever will.
And don’t assume the number tells you what you’re getting. We’ve seen the same $4,000 fee mean completely different things at different programs — one offers next to nothing beyond the regular season, no offseason work, minimal extra contact time. Another runs 15 to 20 additional sessions for the same money. Same price tag, completely different value. Ask exactly what’s included for the fee — practices per week, season length, offseason access, tournament entries — before you compare one club’s number to another’s.
Player Skill Level — Be Honest About Fit
Every parent, and most kids if we’re being honest, wants to say they’re on the “elite” club — the one that goes to the big tournaments and has the name recognition. That’s great if your kid can play and compete at that level. Most kids can’t, and even the ones who make the team aren’t guaranteed playing time once they’re there.
We’ve lived this one directly. My son loves the game — it’s the only sport he plays. He’s been at it five or six years, has genuinely good stick skills, but he’s smaller than most of his teammates and not as naturally athletic as the top players on the roster. He’s been on the same club team for four years, and while the coaches like him, they coach to win. In the big tournaments, against the best competition, he rarely sees the field. There’s nothing worse as a parent than driving six hours, standing on a lacrosse sideline for six hours in 90-degree heat, and watching your son get three reps the entire day. Harder still is knowing how that makes him feel, even when he doesn’t say much about it.
We’ve always let our kids make their own calls about whether to keep playing, and we still believe in that. We gave him the full picture going in — what the team was, who he’d be competing against for reps, what playing time might realistically look like. He chose to stay anyway, because he loves the game and loves being part of that group. That’s still the right call to respect. But respecting his choice doesn’t make it easy to watch play out. He gets to say he’s on the “elite” team, and he does get to practice year-round with some very good players. The games where he barely plays are still quietly chipping away at his confidence in a way that’s easy for a parent to miss, because nobody’s talking about it out loud.
That’s the real cost of choosing a program above your kid’s current level: it isn’t a dollar amount, it’s what happens to a kid who loves a sport but rarely gets to play it in the moments that matter most to him. This is one of the harder conversations to have with yourself as a parent. It’s not about talent alone — it’s about whether the level of the program matches where your kid actually is right now, not where you hope they’ll be by August. A program that’s a tier below “elite” but where your kid plays real minutes and keeps developing will usually serve them better than a bench seat on the team with the better logo.
Coaching
I’ll be honest — this is the one item I’d look at first when choosing a program. With three kids across five different club teams over the last seven years, the best experiences we’ve had were always with the most dedicated coaches. The worst were always with coaches who were only in it for their own kid, or worse, only in it to win tournaments.
On the parent-coach topic — which could honestly be its own post — it’s complicated. When kids are young, parent coaches are common, and at a lot of programs they stay common even as kids get older. That’s okay, and honestly necessary, since there are only so many coaches willing to put in the time when it’s not their own child on the field. I’ve been on teams where other parents complained that the coach’s kid got too much playing time, or only played attack, or that the offense ran through their child too often. I get the frustration. I also recognize that the parent coaching is giving up a lot of time and absorbing a lot of noise, mostly from other parents. Is it fair to expect zero bias toward their own kid? Probably not entirely.
Parent or not, coaching is everything. The majority of your child’s game development is going to come from club practices, not games. A coach who spends 85 of 90 practice minutes on offensive sets isn’t teaching the whole game. Look for a coach who teaches the full game — the skills that actually build a player, not just the plays that win the next tournament. That’s what actually leads to development, and wins tend to follow from there.
Winning and Losing
I’m torn on this one, so let me explain. We don’t push club lacrosse on our kids. We covered this in depth in Should I Put My Kid in Club Lacrosse — every year starts with the same question to each of them: do you want to play? Our kids genuinely love the game, and so far the answer has always been yes. We remind ourselves often that this is why we do it — not for scholarships.
As we’ve gotten deeper into the club scene, we’ve realized we’re the minority on this. Most parents will tell you, in one way or another, that their kid is on track for a full ride somewhere. We’re not in it for that, and because we’re not, winning and losing genuinely doesn’t matter much to us. No one remembers next week who won the tournament. Winning is nice — the kids are happier, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to win instead of settling for a loss — but it’s not why we’re out there.
The parents chasing scholarships will tell you winning is the most important thing, and they’re not entirely wrong, even if we land somewhere different on it. As kids get older, heading into their sophomore year, a lot of college recruiting happens at the summer club tournaments. Winning in 8th and 9th grade determines which tournaments — and which pools within those tournaments — your team plays in the following year. At the top tournaments, in the top pools, the sidelines are shoulder to shoulder with college coaches watching the best players compete. In the lower pools of those same tournaments, you might have a handful of coaches watching, if that.
So winning and losing matters more or less depending on why you’re actually out there. Know which version of that you are before tryouts, because it changes what you should be looking for in a program.
Red Flags Nobody Mentions
These are the things that don’t show up on a club’s website or in their tryout pitch, but they’re worth asking about — or watching for — before you commit a season and a few thousand dollars to a program.
No clear practice plan. If you ask what a typical practice looks like and the answer is vague, that’s a signal. Good programs can tell you exactly how their time is structured.
A program that talks about its tournament banners more than its alumni. Walk into the club office and notice what’s on the wall. A program proud of its trophies will tell you about them unprompted. A program that’s actually developing players will tell you where its former players ended up — what high school programs they made, what colleges they walked onto, who’s still playing for fun. If you ask about former players and get a shrug, that tells you what the program is actually optimized for.
High roster turnover every season. If a team is constantly rebuilding because players keep leaving, ask why. Sometimes it’s normal churn. Sometimes it’s a sign of a coaching or culture problem that current families already know about and aren’t telling you.
A coach who talks more about tournament wins than player development in the first conversation. What they lead with tells you what they actually value.
Vague or shifting cost structure. If the all-in cost is hard to pin down — extra fees that “come up later,” unclear tournament travel costs — get it in writing before you commit.
No other parents willing to talk to you honestly. Ask current families. If nobody will give you a straight answer, or everyone deflects, that’s worth noticing.
The Bottom Line
There’s no perfect program, and there’s no one right answer for every family. But going in with the right questions — about time commitment, cost, fit, coaching, and what winning actually means to your family — beats finding out the hard way three months into a season. Use what you see at tryouts and what you hear from current families as your real data, not just the pitch.
Want a printable version of these questions to bring to tryouts? Grab our free Club Program Evaluation Tree — every question in this post, mapped out so you can scan it in five minutes before you walk into a tryout.