Recruiting

[strykr11]

Cal, no way. Too many boys who can milk the college admissions exams, but sputter out come game time.

They have lots of rookies on the roster, so I bet it will be a couple of years until we see a team like the Golden Bears of yesteryear. Especially since there is much more parity among the WCLL than ever before.

Among the USLIA, Cal is second only to Stanford in academics and is definitely the best public school. They will always be at a recruiting disadvantage. Regardless, Coach Dini has done a great job recruiting so far. We'll see if he can also bring up the field play and develop those new players.

Correction: In the entire world Cal is second to no one in terms of academic reputation. ( See the November THSE Study.) ...and never to Stanfurd!
This is hardly a recruiting disadvantage but rather a huge advantage as is Berkeley's ideal climate and location.
Isn't Cal's descent in the MDIA really a result of a different coach for 02, 03 and 04. Surely during the last Proud year and then the sole Demeo year there was little motivation to do outreach/recruiting and it was particularly evident in the very small team Cal fielded in 04. Few of the 04 rookies had ever played a game of lacrosse. That they won as many games as they did was really a case of over achieving.
The recent upsurge in the qualifications required to gain admittance to UCSB which does not quite have Cal's vaunted academic reputation makes it seem to me that in the future UCSB rather than Cal will be the school which finds itself at a recruiting disadvantage.

[the lax]

I would infer that the out of state tution is a hinderance to UCSB. If parents have 35,000 to spend, would they want to spend it on Berk or the University of Causal S__ & B___?

[pistol pete]

Wow, save it for the grad school apps. Last time I checked, the undergrad exp extended beyond getting off on one-upping your peers' test scores and bullcrap rankings systems (at Cal, you have your steller and consistent achievements from your grad students to thank).

SB is on the beach on the beach, right? My guess is hotties (and in turn quality lax players) from all of CA will continue to flock there as long as IV remains a world-class study area.

[sohotrightnow]

The fact is, Proud never recruited, sans the class high school graduating class of 1997...that class was an anomaly as it produced both bright individuals and amazing lacrosse players with the likes of Warner, the Moons, Kreitz, Principi, and Hammond being accepted to Cal. In addition, in the pre-Proud years, it was a lot easier to get in to Cal because they truly had help in the admission department-Bijesse had a close friend who tagged borderline candidates applications. Once Proud took over he was second to none as a coach, but his recruiting tactics left something to be desired. Granted, coaching changes have played an impact, but it is minimal in the grand scheme of things at UC Berkeley. The fact remains that it is just extremely difficult to get accepted to Cal and there really aren't an abundance of stellar lacrosse players with 4.5 GPAs and 1400+ SATs in California, so its no wonder that they have had difficulty fielding a team that is competitive. Not to say that it is necessarily easy to be accepted to UCSB, but they do have a decided advantage in my opinion without a doubt. I also think Dini is doing a great job recruiting and motivating his players, but it will be a constant uphill battle...thats just the nature of the beast when trying to recruit non-varsity athletes at a school that has the academic prestige that Cal does.

[strykr11]

.... in the pre-Proud years, it was a lot easier to get in to Cal because they truly had help in the admission department-Bijesse had a close friend who tagged borderline candidates applications. Once Proud took over he was second to none as a coach, but his recruiting tactics left something to be desired. Granted, coaching changes have played an impact, but it is minimal in the grand scheme of things at UC Berkeley. The fact remains that it is just extremely difficult to get accepted to Cal and there really aren't an abundance of stellar lacrosse players with 4.5 GPAs and 1400+ SATs in California, so its no wonder that they have had difficulty fielding a team that is competitive.

Men's Lacrosse and a few other club sports-Ice Hockey, LtWt. Crew- still are able to tag prospects. Did you mean that Bijesse's friend did more than this?...In addition under comprehensive review borderline applicants can be admitted in the first round if they are truly distinguished in their sport and have written about it in their personal statement, even before the secondary review. This was not the case in the "pre-Proud" years when the admissions was much more based on numeric formulas.
For California residents, those with either a 4.50 GPA or a +1400 SAT 1 have a better than 99% chance of being admitted as long as they did not apply to the three impacted COE Majors: EECS, ENG. Undeclared, or Bio Engineering. Most of the other COE majors are actually by varying degrees easier to be admitted to than L&S.
Berkeley admissions are highly competitve but for one who is truly distinguished in a sport or other field of accomplishment, it does not take a 4.5 and 1400+ to gain admission even without being tagged.
With Lacrosse's explosive growth there are a lot more accomplished athletes in lacrosse with outstanding academic credentials in California at present than there were a decade ago. One point about Santa Barbara admissions is that unlike Berkeley they also rank students by High School which is another hurdle especially at schools where they formerly had a sizable number of players and from which a lot of kids apply there like SI and O'Dowd.....and Dini is doing a great job with outreach and recruiting.