Five Burning Questions: 30 Days From the 9/9 Contact Date

<p>Thirty days from now, recruiting will get underway for the Class of 2028, the first group to experience both a later start date and a whole new world under the 5-for-5 eligibility model. The latter could have a significant impact on the number of players recruited in each class. In this piece, we'll touch on both rule changes, the potential trickle-down effect on the Ivy League — which won't have to abide by the 5-for-5 — and how the 2028 recruiting cycle could unfold for Virginia and UNC.</p>   <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What impact will the new 5-for-5 eligibility model have on the recruiting landscape?</h3>   <p>With 5-for-5, the 48-man roster cap and the <a href="https://preplacrosse.com/2026/06/justified-hype-class-of-2028-summer-recruiting-preview/">'28 class shaping up to be one of the best in recent years</a>, there's plenty of curiosity surrounding what could unfold this fall. This summer, whenever I asked a college coach about the size of their recruiting class, eight was by far the most common answer I received, suggesting that recruiting classes will shrink by three or four players. </p>   <p>Similar to — but also different from — the years immediately following COVID, rosters will ultimately become older and deeper, and the fight for playing time will become more competitive as players from five classes vie for minutes. As a result, there will be fewer predictable openings for incoming freshmen, and college coaches will have to be more confident and strategic than ever when it comes to building their respective '28 recruiting classes in this new era of college sports. Roster management has always been critical, especially in the transfer portal era, but it will now be even more important — as will player development.</p>   <p>There will be plenty of cases in which coaching staffs decide not to take a goalie every year and, in fewer cases, a face-off specialist. In the past, plenty of top programs felt like they could take a flier on a raw prospect — for instance, an imposing defenseman from a non-hotbed who needed time to develop but could turn into something down the line. With smaller classes, schools won't be able to take as many risks and will have to feel more confident in the prospects they offer, simply because there will be fewer spots to use.</p>   <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How will the new recruiting contact date affect everything?</h3>   <p>While I don't believe the contact date shifting from 9/1 to 9/9 will necessarily have a dramatic effect on the commitment timeline, I do think it will have a positive effect in the grand scheme of things. Before getting into why that is (and why the contact date changed), I'll start by saying that it's the 5-for-5 that could potentially have a much bigger impact on the pace of the commitment timeline, causing five-stars and Top 100-level prospects to fly off the board even quicker than they have in the past few cycles.</p>   <p>The main reason the contact date changed for men's lacrosse is to avoid having recruiting take place on Labor Day (as it did last year) or during the holiday weekend, so the Wednesday after LDW at 7:00 a.m. made logical sense. Of course, coaches are away from their families enough during the summer, so this was a positive change to combat that reality. On the flip side, a lot of private schools tend to go back to school on the Wednesday after Labor Day, and public schools will already be back in session. Quite frankly, lacrosse recruits take off enough school days to visit colleges in September, so one would hope that this isn't one of those days that a ton of '28s take off to field calls.</p>   <p>An additional positive is that, in this new landscape, college coaches will have more time to prepare their boards, get their ducks in a row, and communicate with club and high school coaches before the contact period opens. They'll have more time to identify their priorities, go over film if needed, gather information about upperclassmen that might return for fifth years down the road, and go over strategy as a staff before they can actually begin communicating with prospects. That should make for a more organized and efficient process once Sept. 9 arrives, which is certainly a positive. </p>   <p>One final factor, albeit a relatively minor one, is how ACC and Big Ten programs utilize home football games for big recruiting weekends, even though coaches often downplay the significance of those visits. Nearly all of these programs would have had a home game around Labor Day weekend, and while Notre Dame, Ohio State and Penn State still have two or three home games in September, respectively, the shift changes the calendar slightly. Last year, North Carolina was particularly aggressive on Sept. 1, and famously had all but one of its opening day visitors for the Tar Heels' game against TCU ultimately commit to the program.</p>   <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What challenges and opportunities will the Ivy League programs face under the new landscape? </h3>   <p>To start, it's important to note that the Ivy League not only has yet to publicly respond to the 5-for-5 ruling, but also does not currently allow for any grad students to participate in athletics. The league has always been an outlier of sorts, choosing not to opt into the House Settlement and, therefore, not being subject to its roster caps. Even if it did allow grad students to play, it would be difficult for Ivy League institutions to fully embrace fifth-year players given the limited availability of one-year graduate programs.</p>   <p>In general, I wouldn't expect Ivy League programs to suddenly become less attractive to prospective student-athletes and their families, even if doing so means using a fifth year elsewhere — or not using it at all and entering the real world after four years.</p>   <p>One major factor worth considering is the potential trickle-down effect that some Ivy League lacrosse programs could benefit from. With so many Top 25 programs taking somewhere in the neighborhood of seven to nine recruits rather than 10 to 12, there are only so many spots to go around. As a result, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if several Ivy League schools — particularly Brown, Dartmouth and Penn, which each missed the ILT this past year — ultimately land an even higher caliber of recruit as a result of the numbers game. </p>   <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How will Virginia respond after recruiting a smaller 2027 class?</h3>   <p>As of today, the Wahoos have just four players in their 2027 recruiting class, though there's a strong chance that number rises by the end of the week and eventually reaches six or seven. The cycle didn't go quite the way it usually does for Virginia, which didn't land a five-star '27, but I'm of the belief that the 2028 cycle could go incredibly well for the program under its mostly new regime. </p>   <p>Going back to the 2026 class, the 'Hoos ended up with two five-stars, two more prospects ranked in the Top 30 and another four in the top half of <a href="https://prepllacrosse.com/national/player-rankings/2026-rankings/">last week's Top 200</a>. However, Virginia also had two Top 25 prospects flip on them last fall and recently lost a longtime member of the class, though the program quickly added another lefty to fill that spot. Overall, there's a feeling that the firepower in that class — combined with the aforementioned 5-for-5 rule giving the '26s another year of eligibility — helps mask what was ultimately a down recruiting cycle for the program last fall.</p>   <p>Looking ahead to the '28s, Virginia will have the benefit of having a smaller 2027 class that could allow it to have more money and spots to play with when recruiting a wildly talented class, a group that includes several surefire five-stars and Top 50 talents with significant ties to the program. That combination of factors leads me to believe that this could end up being a top-five class. </p>   <h3 class="wp-block-heading">After bringing in a loaded 2027 class, how will UNC approach the 2028 recruiting cycle?</h3>   <p>Last fall, the Tar Heels helped dictate the tempo of the commitment timeline with a furious start right when the calendar turned to 9/1, securing the No. 2, No. 5 and No. 13 prospects, another four recruits ranked between 21 and 30, plus three more Top 100 recruits. Carolina brought in elite talent across the board, landing the No. 2 attackman and overall player, the highest-ranked midfielder and a surplus of left-handed weapons in a class jam-packed with them. An argument could be made that no program benefited from the House Settlement quite like the Tar Heels. The lacrosse program certainly capitalized on those added resources, and that's saying something for a program that had already been a recruiting dynamo for years.</p>   <p>With recruiting starting up for the '28s a month from now, there's plenty of curiosity about what the class could look like, particularly on the offensive end. Like their rival counterparts, they'll have to deal with smaller numbers. If I were to speculate, I'd expect an increased focus on the defensive side of the ball, though it also remains to be seen how they'll approach recruiting specialists, if at all. Given that this is another offensive class loaded with left-handed weapons, it would be difficult to skip over them entirely. As we highlighted before the start of the summer circuit, this is also a group with a ton of high-level LSMs, so I'd expect that to be a priority as well, along with perhaps a top pure midfielder or two. </p>   <p></p>

Thirty days from now, recruiting will get underway for the Class of 2028, the first group to experience both a later start date and a whole new world under the 5-for-5 eligibility model. The latter could have a significant impact on the number of players recruited in each class. In this piece, we'll touch on both rule changes, the potential trickle-down effect on the Ivy League — which won't have to abide by the 5-for-5 — and how the 2028 recruiting cycle could unfold for Virginia and UNC.