Been coaching club and rec for many years, and can honestly say I've only seen a small handful of kids out of hundreds that gamed the grad year club system at the "youth" level after repeating grade in school. It seemed foolish, and those small handful could have been competitive up one year. Now they are in HS and all bets are off. There is no logical reason to play up once you hit high school because of the way colleges differentiate the grad years for their recruiting. The majority of private HS kids are going to be somewhere near a year older than public school kids in the same class because of pre-first or lateral transfer from public, and that is just a function of private schools evolving into modern times, versus public schools plowing through with the 1-12 grade system that is very old. Once they are in HS, the one year on average age difference should not come into play, and quite frankly, those that carry on the argument are probably not as competitive at that point, but have a hard time letting go. Men get separated from boys in HS, regardless of 1-2-3 year age differences. DI schools can generally evaluate the talent even with a 1-2 year spread, and DIII schools don't get serious looking until they are around 16 or 17 anyway, at which point the spread should be meaningless. If you are now starting HS and still complaining about and labeling "holdbacks", you lost your way about 1-2 seasons ago, and it's really code talk for animosity against private school students. Even at the youth level, we seem to be arguing 99% of the time about a 1% problem.
A handful??? Much more than a handful! Who is talking about HS?? Most people are complaining about the many many prefirst/holdbacks gaming YOUTH sports. Most people that write something negative are usually referring to Youth sports.
It is a strawman to bring the argument into HS lacrosse.
