My answer as a Maryland parent of kids who are not re-classified is this:

There isn't a rule against it, so it isn't cheating. Most people in the Baltimore private school scene do a pre-K year for boys (they call it pre-first). I don't think that is a global strategy for sports advantage. Some parents who neither push sports or have kids who play sports seriously did it thinking before they spend no small fortune on private schools starting in first grade, they want the boy to be a bit more mature for his grade to have success academic, social and also other including sports.

The real reclassifying as I see it is repeating a middle school grade, most widely 8th grade. Some families have their kid do 9th twice. The only strategy to repeat a grade in the public school system is to flunk a grade. Otherwise a family will off-ramp their son from a public middle school and have him repeat that middle school grade at a private. Or shuffle from one private school to the other. Then once 9th grade comes some budget conscious families will RETURN their son into the Maryland public school system having done the repeat middle school year at a private.

The way I see it and have counted it using no less than the data from the clubs and schools, reclassifying in the MIAA is an overwhelming majority of the kids playing lacrosse at those schools and with Crabs and other clubs. It is also creeping toward a more and more widespread "poor man's" game where parents will off ramp their kid from the public school system to repeat 8th grade at a private, and then return to start 9th grade at a public high school as a reclassified. All that failing, if you have no money like Canadians you just verbally say you are reclassifying for a PG year, substantiated with absolutely nothing in regards to which prep school that will be if there even is one or imaginary, then easy peasy you can get a full club team together playing down one school year for club only. It seems to me that Canadians don't make as much of high school lacrosse in their country, so don't focus on it so much for school when kids are young and save for it to be tomorrow's problem.

I just don't get it when Maryland or DMV parents go off so defiantly. It is a lacrosse strategy widely applied and might as well just be forthright about it. Again, there isn't a rule against it and there certainly isn't upside in the denials and lying about the plain fact that it is very widespread and most widespread among MIAA schools and a couple major clubs including Crabs.