Lacrosse Magazine – top teams & players in the Western United States for 2012

Lacrosse Magazine's (LM) March 2012 issue forecasts the top 10 Western High School teams and lists five "Players to Watch." Five California teams made the cut, as did three Colorado teams. One team each, from Washington and Oregon complete the list. Two teams from NorCal are on the list – Saint Ignatius at #3 and Monte Vista at #8. Here's the list of Lacrosse Magazine's top 10 Western teams for 2012:

• Kent Denver CO

• Torrey Pines CA

• St. Ignatius CA

• Coronado CA

• Mercer Island WA

• Regis Jesuit CO

• Foothill - Orange County CA

• Monte Vista - Danville CA

• Lincoln - OR

Cherry Creek - CO

From the NorCal teams listed above,  Lacrosse Magazine cites important contributors to their teams as:

St. Ignatius

Chad Bell

Chad Cohan

Peter Doyle

Matt Emery

Spencer Evans

Charlie Ford

JW McGovern

Jack McGovern

Will McKee

LM lists seven of these players as already committed to NCAA DI programs and expects all nine to play DI lacrosse.

Monte Vista

Gus Gradinger

Sam Langon

Cameron Parsons

Jack Pederson

Austin Richardson

Andrew Simor

Lacrosse Magazine also lists 5 Players to Watch from the West. Four of the 5 are from California and one is from NorCal. The five, in the order LM lists them, are:

JW McGovern A St. Ignatius Yale commit

Zach Fixen, M Palos Verdes Maryland commit

Brendan Gaughan, A La Costa Canyon Michigan commit

Jack Bobzien, A Arapahoe, CO Hartford commit

Sean Doyle, A Torrey Pines Cornell commit

All four California boys played on the Under Armour Underclassmen All-American West team that did so well at the Under Armour tournament this past summer.

Parenthetically, I found it interesting that the three California Attackmen who are mentioned in the LM article first met at Jake Reed's Nike Blue Chip camp in the summer of 2009, just after finishing their Freshmen year. They were the only California Attackmen at that camp. Perhaps Jake Reed's "early-detection" sniffer is better than I thought.

Commenting on the NorCal player, LM quotes McGovern's coach, Chris Packard, as saying, "He is custom-built to play at X." LM goes on to say that McGovern "... has drawn comparisons to Virginia's Steele Stanwick for his ability to dissect defenses."