Welcome to WlaxRecruiting. The aim of this site is to provide you with tools and information to use during the recruiting process for the sport of women's lacrosse. To that end the site provides you with access to what I believe is the most complete database of colleges that sponsor women's lacrosse at the NCAA varsity level. I've looked around at some of the other sites that provide college searches and they often miss some of the schools that field a team. The current database covers every team that will field a varsity team in the 2009-2010. But more importantly, for every school the database contains direct hyperlinks to things like the women's lacrosse web page, the coach's bio and on-line prospect questionnaires and contact information for the coach. You'll be taken directly to those resources without having to hunt for them, which I can testify is sometimes a difficult process.

The access to the database is through a Google Maps interface. If you have used this site before, you will see a different look when you access the directory. When the page opens you should see a map of the United States with a series of icons for each state in which there is at least one college that has a NCAA women's lacrosse team. Clicking on the icon will show an info window with a series of tabs listing the colleges by division. Each tab will have a link for each school that will take you to a full profile for that institution. You can return at any time to this default map state by clicking on the "Return to Default Map" button found in the upper left of the map.

To the left of the map is a column with two items. First is a set of controls to filter the schools shown on the map. You have the ability to filter the results by division of play, undergraduate population, institution type (private or public) and distance from a given zip code. (The distance is a straight line radius from the center of the zip code. Actual driving distances may differ.) The map will react to any change in the filter settings automatically except when you set try to filter based on distance from a zip code. You must click the Set button any time you want to use or adjust this filter. The Clear button removes any zip code filter. You can remove all filters and return to the default map by clicking the button in the upper left of the map.

The second item is below the filters. It is a list of the schools that meet the current filter criteria. The list is grouped under a heading for each division. Initially the list is compressed, but clicking on the stick icon for a division will reveal the list of schools in that division that meet your current filtered criteria. When you do so, the stick will rotate to the horizontal position. Clicking on it a second time will remove the list of the individual schools and rotate the stick back to the upright postion. If no schools in a division meet you current criteria, that division will not appear in the list.

In addition to the filters provided by the controls, you can also zoom in on the map. Once you reach a particular zoom level, the state markers no longer appear. (Anytime fewer than 10 institutions meet your current criteria, the state markers will also disappear.) Instead markers will appear for any school in the current viewing window. Hovering your mouse cursor over one of these marker will reveal the name of the school. Clicking on the marker will bring up an info window with a link to take you to a full profile of the school.

If you exit the map, your filter setting will be retained for a time so that you can pick up where you left off when you return.

In addition to the directory, the links page provides important primary sources to help you educate yourself about the process of recruiting. Among these are documents from the NCAA and the National Clearinghouse.

The data on in the profile for each college for tuition, population and test scores is current through the 2008-09 school year. As the information on later years becomes publicly available, the database will be updates.

This site is a work in progress. It should work with Internet Explorer version 7 and above. Firefox 3.0 and above as well as Opera, Chrome and Safari. If you have any suggestions or you find something is not working correctly, please drop me an email at eshea3-at-wlaxrecruiting.com (replace the -at- with the @).