"You are not going to develop your game with Coach Z. He recruits heavily, never admits when he is wrong, bullies players in meetings so they won’t challenge him and plays the guys that will keep his pipeline filled. He is very good at recruiting although I think that will change as his reputation begins to spread in the lacrosse community. It is amazing to watch guys as first year players compared to their senior season. Only a small handful actually look any different. You will gain game knowledge, but you are never going to get the individual attention required to improve your game. If you are a recruit, don’t come here. There are plenty of good schools where coaches will try and improve you individually and play the best players, regardless of where they came from. You have been warned that you will not get that with Coach Z."

"As a parent your hope is to guide your child toward the best decisions possible. I thought I was doing that when we were deciding on schools for my son. Coach Zimmerman and Coach Havira seemed great through the recruiting process and that coupled with the reputation of Centre seemed to make it a great choice. When speaking with Coach Zimmerman we had some very pointed and specific questions to be sure we were properly vetting him and the program. My son liked Centre but his goal was to play lacrosse. He was recruited at several schools and many of the coaches essentially guaranteed the he was good enough to compete for playing time immediately. A few of the coaches told him point blank, he had would have spot on the starting lineup day one. This was not a requirement for him, but he would never have selected a school that did not offer a solid chance to start during his career. He was recruited at some top-10 D3 and a few D1 programs and intentionally steered clear for this reason. In our conversations with Coach Zimmerman we asked two very important questions. Will my son compete for starting playing time and do you intend to keep the roster at reasonable levels? He told us that my son was a player that would be in a position to immediately compete for playing time, year one, and that he would keep the roster at a reasonable level of around 35-40 players maximum. We would never had chosen Centre had we heard differently on those two items. Having had a great time with the guys he met during his visit and trusting that Coach Zimmerman seemed like an honest guy, he committed. Very quickly we learned that Zimmerman is a salesman first. He will tell you what you want to hear to bring in recruits. To be clear, he is using Lacrosse as a profit center for the school. He does recruit talent and the team is competitive as a result, but he will say anything to bring in bodies. Every Fall my son was told that he was going to be in the mix for the following Spring and every Spring he was told he would not be playing. He was always given ambiguous reasons for being benched and he was never given a path toward playing time. He asked over and over for specific things he could work on to better his chances and never, not once, did the coaches give him any sort of roadmap for improvement. He constantly asked for actionable things he could work on and all he heard were things like just keep doing what your doing. Horrendous coaching in my view. They have the guys they intend to play and they have no interest in helping players figure out how they might work their way in. Coaches have every right to play who they want, but no coach should lie to fill spots and offer no path to playing. Since giving his word that his rosters would always be of reasonable size, it is now well above 50. Had we known this, we would never have chosen Centre. For a small staff it is not reasonable to manage a roster if that size. We were very specific in our desire to avoid programs with bloated rosters and Zimmerman was happy to lie to us knowing that it was a deciding factor in our decision making. Bottom line, Coach Zimmerman is a dishonest man who will say anything to get you on campus and will lie every step of the way once you are there. He will steal dreams of playing college lacrosse. If lacrosse is an important criteria for your school choice, do not play for Grant Zimmerman. He truly does not care if he steals that dream, so long as he gets numbers. "

"Pretty much like the other reviews. Z tells you what you want to hear and then favors the private school kids. Wish I had played for someone else. "

"It is unfortunate that I am rating Z so low, but he is just not a fair guy. He and the other coaches play favorites, over recruit, and do not treat everyone equally. If you come from the right family or go to the right school you will have an advantage. If you aren’t so blessed, you better be really, really good if you want to play. If you aren’t “chosen” you will always have to do more and you will fear for every mistake because you will not get the second and third chances that some players get. You will hear how great you are doing and how good you look, then you will sit on the bench with no idea what happened and no idea how to fix it. There are some very good players sitting on the bench at Centre because they didn’t go to the right school or they are buddies with the coaches. There are so many guys thinking about quitting after this season that it is down right scary. "

"Zimmerman is just not an honest guy. He has a great presence and there are a lot of parents and players that love him, but there are a whole lot that have grown to really resent him. The biggest issue is that he doesn’t coach players to get better and he lies to them about where they are in terms of playing time. He over recruits, knowing that a lot of the guys will never play, but he leads them on so they will come to Centre. We have a lot of guys who quit every year and there were always guys thinking about quitting. They just don’t like playing for someone they can’t trust, and Z can’t be trusted. He has his favorites and they will always have the advantage. He does know the game and he recruits a lot of talent so he can reward his favorites and still win. I love the guys I had the chance to play with, but for lacrosse, I really wish I had gone somewhere else. I would never have played for Z (or Coach Phil) if I had known in advance what I was getting into. "

"Coach Z is a great recruiter. He will make you feel like he really wants you at Centre. He send handwritten letters while recruiting and really makes you feel like you are part of the future. Once you get there, you will soon realize he already has his chosen guys and you were never more than a practice squad guy. If you are lucky enough to be one of his chosen, your mistakes won’t matter, and you will play no matter what. If you aren’t, you are going to play tight and scared because any mistake could end your season. He will lie to you in your individual meetings and tell you you are goi g ti be playing a lot but when the season comes around his boys are the ones on the field. If you ask for a specific plan to work your way into the lineup, you will not get it. He is very intentional about avoiding specific paths to playing time because he doesn’t want you to be able to work through a specific process to play. He loves his private school kids and he especially loves private school kids from specific schools. He knows where his recruiting bread is buttered and if you come from certain schools, you will start out ahead. It doesn’t guarantee you will play, but you will get a whole lot more benefit if the doubt. The hardest part is having a coach repeated lie to you in meeting after meeting. Going through the recruiting process I really grew to respect Coach Z, but know I just wish I had gone somewhere else with Coaches who were honest and had an intent ti grow my game. I know a lot of people will read this and think that every coach is going ti okay the best players, but for Coach Z, he recruits so much better than the rest of the conference, he can play his favorites and still be much more talented then any other team they play. Just know, if you intend to play for Centre, you better be really sure that you played at the right place, have the right family, or are so good that he has no choice to play you. Really disappointed I. The man I thought Coach Z was. "