Key Points of interest for players, parent and coaches:
  1. Having several team-coach-driven select teams, without a true “elite” team representative of the State’s best players together, creates a fragmentation of top talent, weakening the ability of SC lacrosse to present its best team to the lacrosse world outside of the state.
  2. While having more than one select team performs a valuable and needed role in creating more opportunities for accelerating the skill development of talented individuals in a more highly competitive environment, it actually retards the optimal pace of the emergence of SC lacrosse at the national level if the top talent is spread out among several teams, as it now is.
  3. Effectively improving the perception and credibility of SC lacrosse at the national level is the most powerful means of increasing the opportunities for recruitment and scholarship aid for all SC lacrosse players.
  4. TP does not intend to be, nor would we want to be, the only elite or select team in SC, as our goal is to have only the top 25-30 players in the state as members of TP.  This creates the express need for other select teams to operate so that all the talented players in the State can have an opportunity to develop their skills more quickly and proficiently in a highly competitive context.  For this reason TP will advocate that players not offered membership on TP should join other select teams and will support the efforts of other select teams in populating their teams with players who are not on TP.
  5. TP aspires to attract the top 60 to 80 players to its tryouts, which would be by invitation only following their head coaches’ recommendations, and subsequent offers of team membership would be made based on completion of tryouts, strength of coach’s recommendation, video review (if available), and rankings by position.
  6. Because TP coaches are not, and will not be, coaches of college or HS teams in SC, and because TP will wholly represent the interests of SC lacrosse as an entirety, the impartiality of the selection process and the allocation of playing time can be assured more easily than in select teams whose coaches are also individual HS team coaches.
  7. TP coaches, and the TP selection process, will, therefore, not be susceptible to any possible team bias or subtle “political” pressure due to their school or school district affiliations.
  8. TP will also be different in that it will be a non-profit arm of a 501 C (3) corporation, and its coaches will not derive any compensation for their coaching duties, other than team-related expense reimbursement, from the team membership revenues.
  9. Though the explicit intent and objective for TP is to build the skills and experience level of its players to enhance the reputation of and respect for the caliber of HS lacrosse in SC through competitive play and success in tournaments, the coaches’ emphasis will be on quality of play and continuous improvement, rather than merely winning, as the means to this end.  The inculcation of respect for disciplined practice, hard work and conditioning, team skills, sportsmanship, and commitment to the heritage of the game will be the “life skills curriculum” associated with TP participation.
  10. While TP coaches will not be the primary advocacy for the recruitment of its players by collegiate coaches, TP coaches will use their extensive network of key contacts in the lacrosse world outside of SC and within, to promote the interests of TP players and increase their exposure to top level collegiate coaches and assistants … and TP coaches will actively work with players’ individual team coaches in support of player promotion efforts in the recruiting process. 
  11. To the fullest extent possible from its inception, TP will offer scholarship aid for team fees for financially-needy players.  Over time, TP will expand its sponsorship relationships to provide increased financial aid capabilities and to help defray future team fee costs.  Any surplus membership revenue remaining at the end of one season will immediately be reserved to the financial aid funding for the following season.
  12. Although TP will begin in 2009 as a “Fall Ball” team, it will increase its scope in 2010 to include a summer practice and tournament season.



    For more information, please email info@teampalmettosc.com.