BVL Team Formation

A Note on BVL Team Formation:

For beginning players, the process is fairly simple. We try to group beginning or less experienced players together on teams that will play in a division appropriate to their experience level. Our league, the AYL (Arapahoe Youth Lacrosse) will then organize these divisions by age and expected competitive level. We have three general levels for each age group in Colorado: Red (advanced), White (intermediate), and Blue (basic).  

We commonly receive requests for players new to BVL to be grouped with returning players. In many cases, it is difficult to grant these requests as returning players are usually part of teams which already have full rosters. Furthermore, we believe that players develop more rapidly and have a greater comfort level when they are placed with teammates of similar experience and ability.    

For returning players, the process is more complex. Team formation is an art, not a science, and every new season we must reconcile a series of competing objectives in order to produce viable rosters. These conflicting goals include:  

• Coaches and parents desire to have the most competitive team possible
• Parents request to carpool
• Parents belief that teammates should have equivalent skill level to their son
• Players wish to play with their friends, regardless of friend’s skill level
• Organizational requirement for balanced roster sizes

Of course, it is impossible to fulfill all of these goals simultaneously, but we have devoted significant resources to that effort. This offseason, we spent more time than ever before communicating with coaches to get their input on player evaluations, in order to generate the rosters which will be released. In most cases, these rosters are final and changes are not likely. 

Furthermore, we will utilize input from our Select tryout process in October & November to determine placements for our top 2 teams at the 6th- 7th- 8th grade levels.  Please note that players do not have to participate in tryouts, we will automatically assign these players to the appropriate level team on the basis of their experience and coach input from previous seasons.

We recognize that some parents may not agree with their son’s placement, as they may have a different evaluation on their son than his previous coaches or I have. Sometimes we make mistakes. So we hope that parents will recognize that our goal is always to place a player on the team which will give him the best opportunity to develop and succeed.  

We appreciate your passionate support of Boulder Valley Lacrosse, as we continue to grow each season, and we look forward to seeing you at the lacrosse field.