The National Developmental Program for lacrosse will begin play in August of 2004. NDP Lacrosse was created by lacrosse superstar and Baltimore Bayhawks coach Gary Gait to match the needs of elite level high school lacrosse players with college lacrosse aspirations.

“Our goal is to improve the process for the identification of prospects for college lacrosse programs and to make the experience better for everyone involved: players, parents and coaches,” says Gait, who founded NDP Lacrosse with Bayhawks assistant coach David Huntley.

NDP Lacrosse, which is loosely modeled after the Olympic Developmental Program for soccer, will start with two high school boy’s divisions, Under-17 and U-19, in 2004 and add two girls divisions, U-17 and U-19, in 2005. NDP has divided the country into four regions so there are approximately 500 high school teams in each region. There will be 16 teams in each age group in each region for a total of 128 teams. Tryouts for the teams will take place in August of 2004 and players will be selected using the NDP Evaluation System, which is similar to what you might see at a world team tryout. Coaches from the 30 high schools that each team draws from will be invited to participate and will use NDP’s proprietary software to evaluate and rank players. The NDP coach will use this information to select his team of 30 players.

“We will be making the results of the tryout available to the players,’ says Huntley, “and they will be able to see how they compare to their peers and identify areas for improvement.”

Once the teams are selected they will participate in a minimum of 10 practices and three tournaments. Developmental and Sectional Tournaments will be held in the late fall and the Regional Tournaments will take place in late June of 2005. The top four teams in each region will advance to the National Tournament in July.

“By attending eight days of NDP Regional Tournaments a college coach will be able to see all of the top players competing against each other,” Gait says. “In addition, they will be able to track the progress of NDP players through our online database. "

NDP Lacrosse’s first challenge will be to hire coaches for the 128 teams. An informational DVD will be mailed out to prospective coaches later this month and applications can be requested online at www.ndplacrosse.com.

“Our goal is to identify and develop elite level high school lacrosse players, and great coaches are the key to our success,” says Huntley. “We have created a compensation and support sytem to reflect this and we will be working very hard to find coaches all across the country.”

Informational DVDs for prospective players and their parents will be made available through their high school coaches in January. Players and parents can sign up to be notified of new developments and to receive advance information at www.ndplacrosse.com.

The initial reaction to NDP Lacrosse from the lacrosse industry has been very positive. Inside Lacrosse is the media partner, STX, DeBeer and Gait Helmets are the equipment sponsors, Under Armour is the apparel sponsor and Lax World is the official retailer. Every player selected for an NDP team will receive an equipment and apparel package from the top brands in the sport.

“We are very pleased that some of the most experienced people in our sport share our vision for high school lacrosse players and are joining us to make NDP Lacrosse a reality,” says Gait.