Hello: Dan Kinek

Though PA M Dan Kinek has already graduated from high school, a postgrad year at Avon Old Farms prep school in Connecticut will see him land in Michigan’s class of 2012.

Future Wolverine Dan Kinek (photo by PhillyLacrosse.com)

Relevant Articles

We’ll get started with the PhillyLacrosse.com article that confirmed Kinek’s commitment:

He collected 70 goals and 24 assists and finished his career with more than 200 goals and 300 assists while receiving All-Phillylacrosse.com honors this summer. Kinek, who plays for Duke’s Lacrosse Club, also was captain of the basketball team and achieved Honor Roll his junior and senior years at Emmaus.

These are all positives: prolific scorer, well-rounded athlete, and great student. He also helped lead a rebuilding team to a conference championship:

Kinek helped the Hornets win their fourth straight LVC championship in 2011. “It was a rebuilding year this past season,” said Kinek. “The team was young, not as experienced, but it was a great group of guys who wanted to win.”

That’s all they really say about his game, but there is a good bit about confidence in the future of Michigan’s lacrosse program (to be fair, he wouldn’t be choosing the Wolverines if he didn’t feel that way), so check out the rest of the article. He was the League MVP, and scored seven goals(!) in a game. Another PhillyLacrosse article gives a couple more accolades:

He was a First Team All-Phillylacrosse,com pick and was MVP at the Dan Carr benefit game at the Philly Showcase in November.

He was also on the all-Eastern Pennsylvania midfield. The recap from that tournament:

The Duke’s L.C. got three goals from Dan Kinek (Emmaus senior) and two more from Jeremy Omrod (Holy Ghost Prep junior) in its 6-2 win over the Inter-Ac stars. Goalie Victor Garcia (La Salle senior) did not allow a goal in the first half…

“I was fortunate enough for (coach) Ebe (Helm) to ask me to come out and play,” said Kinek, who scored four goals and is looking for the right Division I school. “I was all pumped up.

His 70 goals and 24 assists were enough to place him among the nation’s scoring leaders this high school season (9th in the Philly area).

For Dukes, his club team, he helped lead them to the Delaware Blue Hen Challenge championship, taking home offensive MVP honors. He repeated the feat at the Tri-State Tournament, taking home team honors and the offensive MVP distinction. Sadly, their run of excellence ended at Johns Hopkins, where Tri-State NJ ended Dukes’s 5-year run of titles.

So, we’ve established he’s a capable scorer – and a top-notch player – but what are his strengths? He’s played attack in the past (as a sophomore starter and the team’s #5 point-scorer with 50 goals),  which speaks to good stick skills and finishing, and the ability to move well without the ball.

He’s not the biggest guy in the world, listed at 5-10 and 165 pounds (The basketball roster listed him at 5-11, for the record), but an opposing defender praised his attitude, not just his ability:

“He’s a great player on the field and an even better person off,” Gulyas said. “I think we all look up to the way he plays and how he handles himself. Every team in the Lehigh Valley tries to shut down Dan Kinek and he’s still the best player. He deserves to be player of the year, no doubt.”

That doesn’t mean he was always perfect, struggling to start the year.

In his sophomore highlight video (embedded below), he plays mostly attack, so it may not be that relevant to his game two years later and at a different position. However, it does show a few things: he was not much of an outside shooter, but was a good dodger/finisher/feeder-type, who can play very well with either hand. Again, his skill set has almost certainly expanded, so take that for what it’s worth.

Other Interest

All basketball pictures are blurry (this one via Emmaus Patch).

As a rising junior, he was being recruited by “several” D-1 programs, but in all honesty, you don’t attend a post-grad year to get a bit more exposure unless those offers are mostly-lower-end (or at the very least ones you’re not interested in). He did say in the PhillyLacrosse commitment article that the Big Ten experience was a big part of picking the Wolverines, so the smaller East Coast schools may not have been a draw for him. He had interest in Notre Dame, Penn State, North Carolina, and several smaller schools, but it’s not clear whether much of that interest was reciprocated.

Teammates of Note

Dan is the only member of Emmaus’s class of 2011 (though he’ll be a 2012 recruit for Michigan) to commit to any school, per LaxPower. He’s also the first 2012 recruit from the school in LaxPower’s database. The 2010 class had a quartet of Division-1 commits (two to Bellarmine, one to Hartford, one to Lehigh) and four Division-3 commits, as well.

His club team, on the other hand, his a huge D-1 feeder. Duke’s has pumped out hundreds(!) of D-1 players in the past 10 years, with a handful of D-3 players – all heading to the top programs in that division. In the 2011 class alone, 36 players are committed to Division-1 institutions, with representatives headed to the likes of Duke, Johns Hopkins (2), Maryland (2), North Carolina (2), Notre Dame, and Virginia. Despite all that talent, Kinek was the MVP of the team at multiple summer tournaments.

Video

The most recent highlight comes from his sophomore year:

The Upshot

Kinek is the first true offensive midfielder to commit for the class of 2012 (given all the attackmen that are already committed, he’s not going to play that position at Michigan, despite his history there), and he seems to be a pretty good one. Despite his smaller size, he’s come up big as the MVP of both his high school team (and league) and club team (at multiple tournaments).

With Michigan’s lack of recruits at the position so far, he should have the opportunity to see the field pretty quickly. He’s been able to fill up the scoresheet in four years as a high school varsity player – three as a starter – and he’s going to have another year at post-grad to add some seasoning to his game. Avon Old Farms sends plenty of players to the next level – both from the high school and post-grad ranks – so he’ll get experience playing with some pretty good players, and be ready to come in and contribute at the D-1 level.